


And Then Together, We Take Our Medicine

by VanStock1992



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Bipolar Disorder, Bipolar Sherlock Holmes, F/M, First Love, John Watson is a Good Parent, M/M, Molly Hooper Is A Child, Molly Hooper is a Good Friend, Mycroft Being a Good Brother, Past Drug Addiction, Prostitution, Protective Mycroft, Psychosis, Recreational Drug Use, References to A Study In Pink, Sherlock Becomes A Detective, Sherlock Holmes Has Feelings, Sherlock is a Good Parent, Single Father, Suicide, Ten Years Later, Well Almost Ten Years Later, Widowed, sherlock is a prostitute, the one that got away
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:08:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 26,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27239302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VanStock1992/pseuds/VanStock1992
Summary: Sherlock Holmes and John Watson fell victim to the age old tragedy of meeting the right person at the wrong time. It was the wrong time for many reasons, not the least of which being that John was 28 with absolutely no intention of leaving the army anytime soon and Sherlock was an eighteen year old university student who was still too stubborn to stay on his medication for any length of time and often experienced bouts of psychosis.When Sherlock's paranoia and deception ends their love affair, leaving John to believe that he is dead, Sherlock finds himself in a stimulating profession within in the legal grey area between entertainment and prostitution. He also finds himself a second love and two children. When Victor commits suicide, Sherlock is left picking up the pieces of his twice shattered life and working on the wrong side of the law, until Mike Stanford asks for a favor and Sherlock finds himself, again, face to face with John Watson. And John is not going to let him go this time.
Relationships: Mycroft Holmes/Greg Lestrade, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Sherlock Holmes/Victor Trevor
Comments: 22
Kudos: 27





	1. On, Off and Illicit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sherlock loses John, Victor and His Mind
> 
> Please, consider this the mother of all trigger warnings. Death, suicide, self harm, drugs, losing John (for now) and too much for me to remember even though I'm the one who wrote it.

Sherlock was not quite sure when he lost himself. It could have been away at school, when Mycroft graduated and Sherlock had years to go. Maybe it was when an older boy who was tutoring him in latin- a dead language that Sherlock could not force himself to pay attention to- had him convinced they were having a forbidden romance when it was really just Sherlock sucking him off in the computer lab’s closet and getting nothing in return but kisses where the older boy shoved his tongue into Sherlock’s mouth. There was a distinct possibility that it was his grandfather’s death, or his mother’s unwanted coddling, or sheer genetic disposition from his uncle Rudy, but it hardly mattered. It happened. It happened and he didn’t realize it until there was a specialized cleaning crew at his parent’s house to handle the overflow of bloody bath water and wipe down the walls he had written his own epitaph on using his bleeding wrist.

In hospital, because  _ of course  _ his parents made him stay far past the seventy-two hour hold even though it was utterly pointless, Sherlock found himself to be someone else. Someone frantic, no longer Sherlock Holmes, yet somehow exactly him and no one else. That was it… except trapped in his ever spinning floating and all consuming consciousness, that wasn’t it.  _ It is it. He is not Sherlock Holmes, he is simply that. He. _

_ He is taking in data as it is thrown at him and placing it in haphazard piles that he never has time to go through because more is coming and he can’t shut it out because all that exists in this very moment has to be consumed and stored with the rest. _

_They decide to start him on medication. It’s inevitable really-_ or it **_was_** inevitable because the medication made him Sherlock Holmes again and that was the loveliest feeling in the world to shut out the noise and take the time to rest. _It doesn’t last, and he is back. Back to strictly the stream of unusable information and nothing else. Back to intrusive thoughts. Back to present tense with no energy to do anything about the past._

On.

_ Off. _

On.

_ Illicit. _

On & _ illicit. _

‘Round and ‘round they went, Sherlock and  _ He.  _ John Watson was the poor bastard that fell in love with them both.

* * *

_ He’s on top of a table, he thinks, but he has no idea where the table came from. Maybe Harrods. Or his parents' house. Perhaps, and most likely, the alleyway behind the large flat complex that his dealer lives in where people toss things off their balconies when they move. It must be impressively well made to survive that fall, but the scraped off veneer and splintered wood on one side. Splintered wood means something bad, he decides and catalogs the concept under the file drawer in his lower level study labeled  _ **_‘superstitions’_ **

_ John is yelling at him. It seems like all John does is yell at him these days. Although, come to think of it, he isn’t sure what John is yelling about. Only that he deserves it. He isn’t sure what he did  _ **_to_ ** _ deserve it but he has to have done something because he’s still being scolded and John would never chastise him unjustly. John is a soldier. More than that, John is good. He isn’t good. It was something he accepted about himself the third time Mycroft found him with a needle in his arm and had to spray narcan up his nose to bring him back from the brink of delicious oblivion. John would never have made his sister do that. That is why John is good and he is not. _

_ John is still yelling at him. _

_ The last thing he consciously thought was how bloody bright that chandelier light fixture in the sitting room is and now there is blood on his feet and glass in his hand and he thinks the two are correlated but the missing pieces of the last few minutes- that he must have deleted if he did not recall them- are limiting him from reaching an educated conclusion. Incomplete data was the bane of his existence. _

_ John is the opposite of that, even when John is yelling at him all red in the face and reaching for his hand that is not bloodied until suddenly it is. He looks up. There are two bulbs missing from the lighting fixture and suddenly the room is not so bright except on the edges of his vision which he hopes are coming from the desk lamp and the kitchen lights but may be something else entirely.  _

_ “Get the bloody hell down from there! Look what you’ve done to your hands. Seriously, look at them Sherlock.” John wraps a firm but kind hand around his wrist and turns his palm up to show him the shards of glass lodged in his skin. He can’t bring himself to feel anything at all about it other than the pain that is a million miles away. _

_ Why is his face wet? _

_ Is he crying? _

_ It surely appears that John believes he is crying and John is not the one experiencing a bought of psychosis because John did not send his medication down the garbage disposal after he shot up a 7% solution of cocaine, passed his midterm exams with flying colors and decided that it clearly meant he  _ **_wasn’t_ ** _ crazy and this bipolar disorder diagnosis was just a ploy for Mycroft to numb him with pills so the bloody bastard could pretend to be the smart one. It wouldn’t work. He would always be the smart one. Even if there was glass in his hand or glass covering every inch of his sitting room floor so he could tap dance on and roll in it until he was more glass than he was chemist or illusionist or man. _

_ Man. Man. Man. _

_ What a word. _

_ So short and encompassing half of the population of the world. John is short. Oh he loves John. John encompasses and squeezes and soothes the entirety of the population of his head. A population of four. Of lethargic greyness, highs of euphoria, nauseously pacing with bugs all over his skin and just plain him. At that moment, he knows he is certainly not just plain himself. He is more. He is infinite. _

_ John was  _ **_still_ ** _ yelling.  _

_ “Sherlock, you’re scaring me. Now get down from there so I can look at your hands.” John orders and points at the floor. It’s far away and close again then back to far away. Maybe if he jumps when it’s far away, he’ll jump to the depths of hell where those that are not good are supposed to be.  _

_ That sounds right. _

_ Setting John free from being his babysitter between being his tutor and his lover and his all encompassing force of something else entirely. It’s the right thing to do. _

_ So he jumps. _

_ He jumps into  _ **_not_ ** _ hell. He jumps into John’s arms and they wrap around his middle and he doesn’t wrap around John because what if he hurts John with the glass in his hands? John’s arms are so warm but he has to let him go. What if he forgets and holds John back and cuts him into John-shreds like wood pulp dusted bagged cheese. John is far better than bagged cheese. Who the hell even thought of putting cheese in a bag? Idiots. They better not ever try to put John in a bag covered in wood pulp or he will slit their throats with his new glass hands.  _

_ That’s it, isn’t it?  _

_ He’ll become a vigilante that fights the wrongs of the world with his new found power of glass hands that he could slap across major veins and watch the murderers, rapists- and people that want to cover John in wood pulp and put him in a bag- bleed out on the alleyway cement and it would feel so  _ **_good_ ** _. He would be a hero. Even if he was just a hero to John. God, he would love to be John’s superhero.  _

_ He wriggles from John’s grasp and plops down in his chair but he uses his hands to break his fall and now the glass is deeper and John is cursing at him. _

_ John has a pair of tweezers, a bottle of rubbing alcohol and looks overwhelmed. He makes him walk to the sink and pours the alcohol over his hands. “Shh, love, I know it hurts. I just have to get it clean.” _

_ The operation is performed at their kitchen table. It takes several hours. His face is still wet and he wants to wonder why, but John’s pitying expression says all that needs to be. _

_ “I’m sorry.” He says, and it’s the first thing he’s said for a while. Except his throat is dry, so he is willing to accept the distinct possibility that he was yelling at John between John yelling at him but he cannot recall doing so or what it was about. Probably oblivion. How it terrifies him only because it is so far away until he brings it closer and then someone pushes it back. So many times that someone was Mycroft, but once it was John. John keeps narcan now, as well. It’s in his front pocket every morning. He hates himself for yelling at John, making John carry narcan and the thousands of other things he most likely did or said to John that day to warrant self loathing. He probably didn’t even drink the tea that John made him. John makes his tea with so much love and he didn’t drink it. That must be why he’s crying. “I'm so sorry, John.” He doesn’t say why. He’s sorry for so many things. Sorry for being a thorn in John’s side and a worry on John’s mind and for the glass in his hands and most recently and intensely, for yelling. _

_ John holds his wrists like John would usually hold his hands because his now glassless palms are bandaged so tightly he can’t move several of his fingers. Not too tightly. John is a doctor and knows the right amount of tightness that a bandage should be. He decides he will wait to rip off his bandages when John goes to sleep. John always sleeps before him. Then he will be able to find something else to defend John with. Maybe John’s gun. Except John took the gun to Harry’s house the last time he was grey. He had been so very grey. Now he is the opposite of grey. He is surrounded in violent color. He wants to tell John this, so he does. He tells John about all the colors and that the most vile assault to his senses and intellect is being conducted by the most ghastly shades of pink. John doesn’t understand. He is grateful that John doesn’t have to understand. It would mean John was in the same pain he was and that could never be allowed to happen. He would squeeze two more light bulbs and fill his hands with glass to defend John from that pain. From his pain. From the desire for oblivion. _

_ “Sherlock, I need you to understand something. Please listen. Are you listening?” He nods. He is always listening when John speaks to him. The sound is sweeter than his violin when he is just plain himself. He just doesn’t always hear John’s words. “I love you so much, Sherlock. Everything is going to be alright. I’m here, and everything will be just fine.” _

_ “I love you more, John.” Is all he says and then the sobs take over his chest and he can’t breathe. John holds him, he holds John as well now that John took away his super power. Holding John is worth it. He probably won’t actually squeeze more light bulbs to regain his glass hands. It would be far easier to ask his dealer if he knows where to buy a gun. A secret gun. He’ll sew and special compartment in his Belstaff for the secret gun and then wear it all the time because John loves his Belstaff- says it makes him look mature- so John will never notice and he will always have the secret gun to keep John safe from anyone who would or could or wants to cause John pain or cover him in wood pulp and put him in a bag like that terrible shredded cheese. This plan calms him. Plans have a habit of doing that. _

_ By the time he can breathe, Mycroft is in his sitting room. His brother’s face is sad. He wants to slap the sad right off of it, but doesn’t because that would make John sad and he already makes John so sad already. _

_ “Doctor Watson, he needs to be hospitalized. You know this.” Mycroft tells him, and John nods. _

_ He cries again. He doesn’t want to go. He hates going. Didn’t he just leave there? He was sixteen then. He celebrated his birthday there and it made Mummy cry in the visitors room. There was cake. How old was he now? He is sleeping with John and John graduates medical school and joined the RAMC and deployed three times for six month intervals with time in between so John is at least 29 and he knows that John is oh so very  _ **_good_ ** _ so John would never sleep with a minor. He must be eighteen or nineteen but not twenty. He would remember twenty. For some reason, he knows that twenty is  _ **_very_ ** _ important. Just as important as whales but far less important than John.  _

_ The feeling of relief when rubs a hand on his back is better than any psych ward therapist’s overly presumptuous treatment plan. He’ll tell John that soon. Then, John won’t let Mycroft take him away. “I’d like to try the medication first to see if we can bring him back down. I’ll stay here with him. We can go on lock down, can’t we?” _

_ Mycroft groaned and shook his head. His face was also wet. “You fail to understand the seriousness of this situation, Doctor Watson. Lock down means no knives, breakable dishes, shoelaces, string, bloody stray bedsheets, shaving razors, and heavens knows what else you have around this flat either hidden in his hollowed out books or under the floorboards. He needs to be in hospital.” _

_ John refuses. He thanks him. John has to excuse himself to use the toilet. He is in Mycroft’s arms now and he’s crying into the crook of his neck but Mycroft doesn’t mind except that he offers him a handkerchief to blow his nose in and he is offended. He  _ **_never_ ** _ would have blown his nose in Mycroft’s suit. It was such a fine suit. He respected the craftsmanship of a fine suit. A well tailored suit. Martin had done a fantastic job and he wanted to call him to congratulate him on his craftsmanship but instead he was sitting in Mycroft’s lap like a child and crying all over the collar of his shirt and of his suit. He would send money for the dry cleaning. Except that he had no money. It was Mycroft’s bank card that bought food and toiletries and paid Mrs Hudson the rent and utilities. It also paid Mrs Hudson a secret incentive to tolerate his not-goodness and report anything suspicious to Mycroft. His brother thought he didn’t know. His brother thought wrong. _

_ “I’m here, Sherlock. I will always be here.” Mycroft rocked him for a bit and rubbed his hand on his back and it was not as good as John doing it but still very good. More familiar. An older feeling. A feeling from a time when both his back and Mycroft’s hand were much smaller. “I will do whatever I must to make you safe, Sherlock. I’m sorry.” _

_ He knows that Mycroft is telling the truth. He still doesn’t want to go. _

_ John comes back with a glass of water and three pills in a small cup like the ones at the hospital. They’re the type that come with the take away that John orders to coax him to war when he is apathetic. John was ready for this and bought the small condiment cups at Tesco. They’ve all been down this road before. He hates that. _

_ “Are you on anything else, Sherlock?” John asks and he shakes his head. _

_ John believes him. Mycroft knows it’s a lie. His brother holds him to his body with his upper arms held in place in a bear hug. John rolls up his sleeves and sees the track marks. He hates himself for lying to John. John looks disappointed. He says he’s sorry. _

_ “It’s okay,” John says, as he rolls them back down and buttons the cuffs at the tightest hole because John knows it makes him feel safe. _

_ “Where is your list, Sherlock?” Mycroft asks when he releases him. “I need to see it to make sure the pills are safe.” _

_ He cries again. He tells them it’s in his pocket. This is not a lie. He still hates himself for lying to John and making John pick glass out of his hands and not being able to defend John with his glass hands or the gun- until he gets his secret gun from his dealer- because John took both of them away because John knows that he is bad. John is so good. He loves John. _

_ Mycroft reads the list first and then hands it over to John. The list is long and written in many directions and in the margins because it is very full from the last two weeks. He only has been off his medication for a week. The list made him do it. The list and the numbness. _

_ “It’s been over twenty four hours,” John says, and seems relieved in a grim way that he understands. Relief is often grim even when people pretend it isn’t. People pretend a lot of things. “ _

_ One is a light blue oval. Aripiprazole. It’s a  _ **_‘rescue med’_ ** _ his physiatrist said the last time he saw her. There is no literature he can find on the internet that solidly supports this claim, but it always works so Sherlock will take it. He won’t check it. He loves euphoria but hates hurting John and clearly John is hurting because of him. _

_ The second is round and white. Lorazepam. He’s taken it before, sometimes at home as a pill or in the hospital through his IV. Television doctors love to say the phrase ‘push Ativan!’ whenever a patient is seizing. His was for restlessness and for pulling at the bed restraints when he was almost sixteen and theorized he could probably push off the balcony railing just hard enough to land in the pool. He did. He broke his ankle in the process but he did it. They decided he was suicidal and he yelled at them and made the bars of his hospital bed rattle until they also said ‘push ativan’ but without the implied exclamation point because he wasn’t at risk of choking on his own vomit from seizing. He had stopped vomiting hours before. It helped him sleep. They must want him to do that. John is part of the  _ **_they_ ** _ this time- not a gaggle of bleach blonde hospital nurses that had no business trying to nurse anyone back to health when they were all too fixated on their cheating boyfriends and rebellious children to notice and listen that he was not trying to kill himself, Mycroft is the other half just like before. He decides to appreciate it this time. It’s easy. For John and Mycroft, he will take the pill. _

_ The last is new. Very new, in fact. It is orange and triangular but rounded at the edges and there are actually two of them stacked on top of eachother. He wonders if John did that on purpose. Maybe John was stalling. Maybe John didn’t want him to take the medication but he’s afraid that Mycroft will take him away. He decides he will take that pill if it means that John won’t have to be sad that Mycroft takes him away. Still, he has questions. _

_ Unfortunately, his mouth doesn’t listen to his brain and the first question is the wrong question. “Where is my lithium?” He kicks himself for reminding them that he is supposed to be taking the numbing and dumbing lithium. _

_ “You didn’t like the lithium, love.” John sits on the coffee table that’s meant for standing that is now right in front of him. Mycroft probably moved it. He’s glad he did. It makes John closer than the other chair. His chair. Mycroft is sitting in John’s chair. The chair is from his parent’s house. John’s parents died the month he met Sherlock. John’s parents had needed a lot of fixing too, but wouldn’t let John do it which was ridiculous because he knows that Kohm is the hardest working fixer in the world other than Mycroft who fixes an entire country. John only fixes him. And fixes, and fixes, and fixes. He has theorized that John picked him because he needs a lot of fixing too. Only John could fall in love with a project that kept insisting on undoing itself. John could, and did, because John is good. _

_ Mycroft took the cup of pills from John and handed them to him. He wishes that John had handed them to him. He would feel safer if he had. So he reaches out a hand and John accepts the cup with a sigh. John thinks he is refusing to take them. He wishes he could make his brain tell his mouth to say the words that can correct John’s false conclusion. He can’t, but he can say other words. _

_ “What is it then? I’ve always taken lithium.” Well, always since he sat in the darkness for a month until he had enough energy to crawl to the bathroom to slit his wrists. He was fourteen. The doctors had told him that bipolar disorder manifesting this early was rare. He was proud of that. He has always been advanced. No one corrected him feeling that way, but he knew they thought it was wrong and knows that they still do. He’s less proud now that it’s hurting John. He hates himself for hurting John. A little bit for hurting Mycroft as well. That is relatively new. He makes note to monitor the development.  _

_ John twirls the cup a little with his wrist like John is swishing wine at a tasting to look fancy even though absolutely no one knows what they are doing at wine tasting except trying to out-describe the notes and scents of the liquids only their glasses. He knows that John isn’t trying to look fancy. John is trying to think. John twirls things when he’s trying to think. The orange triangular pulls with rounded edges are still stacked. He likes that. He doesn’t know why. It’s rare for him to not know why. To not know why physics has let John’s twirling not knock the pills out of place or what the damn pills are in the first place. _

_ “Tell me what they are.” He orders and feels bad, but no worse than before. There is a limit to the bad he feels when he is euphoric. He doesn’t want to die, which is good. It’s good because he does have plenty of energy to kill himself but he doesn’t want to because he wants to see John every day of the rest of his life and he wants to believe those days will be in the tens of thousands, not single digits. Not the three or four says it will take for the Aripiprazole to take effect and bring him back to the ground and  _ **_not_ ** _ on dropped-from-the-balcony-very-well-made-but-also-very-terribly-scraped-and-splintered coffee tables trying to unscrew lightbulbs because their brightness was deafening. He doesn’t know how an entirely visual phenomenon could make sound and make enough of it to be so bloody loud, and he _ **_really_ ** _ hates not knowing things. _

_ John looks at the cup then back at him. John’s eyes are beautiful. He looks at them while John talks. “This is lamotrigine. It’s an anticonvulsant that’s sometimes used as a mood stabilizer. Some surveys have found that it has fewer side effects than lithium. I believe it will make you feel better without feeling  _ **_dull_ ** _.” John smiles and winks. He is flattered by John using his word. _

_ The rest of John's words sounded like a pamphlet that a doctor reads when drug companies push them to push a new medication. Or maybe a medical school textbook but John does not have a photographic memory and John is an army doctor. The army does not allow people with epilepsy or bipolar disorder into enlist. They are a liability. If they did allow it, he would have rushed through whatever schooling he needed to be even the lowest of the low required to enlist in the RAMC and gotten completely clean so he could have Mycroft make a few phone calls and keep him with John whenever John deployed. John deployed a lot. Well, far more often that he wants John to go into an active war zone. He hates that John was ever in danger but John had signed up for a dangerous job and he had fallen in love with a man who is in love with danger. He is an idiot. He overdosed the last time John had gone to Afghanistan and when John got a date to go back again- which, granted, was still two months away but he feels it prudent to get a head start so he does feel the hole that has been punched through his chest- he starts using again. Heroin and cocaine are his favorite combination. Without heroin, the cocaine is horrific to come down from. Without the cocaine, the heroin makes him feel  _ **_almost_ ** _ normal. He doesn’t want normal in any amount or even to be within the proximity of it. He wants to get high. _

_ “How did the medications get here so quickly? You didn’t text Mycroft. I would have noticed.” He crosses his arms and exudes as much pride and dignity as he can sitting on his older brother’s lap and pouting over a cup of pills. “You asked for them yesterday when you took your phone into the shower.” _

_ John nodded. “I did. You need your medication, Sherlock.” _

_ Of course, John is right. John is always right when it comes to these things, as John is an excellent fixer. So without further argument, he takes the cup and downs the pills dry. He regrets it. The lamotrigine leaves a horrific taste in his tongue and he quickly accepts the glass of water from John and stands from Mycroft’s lap. He refuses to look his brother in the eye. Soon, all he will want to do is lay down and he wants John to lay with him so he grabs John’s laptop so it’s there for John to keep himself entertained while he lays there staring at the ceiling. Maybe he will stare at John’s laptop instead. John writes a blog that is boring except for the fact that it is written by John and John is the most interesting person in the world. Because he has John's laptop- and he is in the throws of a mixed episode (not) unlike any other- he knows that John will follow. _

Sherlock took his medication. In four days Sherlock was stable enough to use a butter knife to spread his own jam. John went to the market and left Sherlock alone in the flat. Sherlock did nothing wrong. Sherlock kept taking his medication. Sherlock kept taking his medication for three months. Sherlock kept taking it until he received his fourth weekly letter from John and was less than two pages.  _ He paces the flat, afraid of losing him. Afraid that the bloody medications made him blind to the truth that he was losing John all along. He shoots up that night. He stops writing letters. He overdoses, twice. He puts a ‘For Rent’ sign in his window with a number to a burner phone that he convinces- under false pretenses- Mrs Hudson to record a voicemail for. She never asks why he does these things. She accepts that it is an experiment. Really, it’s an illusion. He installs a doorbell that only sounds in his flat labeled ‘221B Upper’ which is redundant but he doesn’t care. He boxes up some of his less desirable belongings and puts them by the skip every day except the day the trucks come by to collect all the rubbish. The boxes are labeled ‘Mycroft Holmes’ because no one would label possessions in the name of the dead or disappeared. That’s what he wants to be and it’s not particularly hard on anything but the sorry excuse for a muscle that involuntarily contracts to send oxygenated blood through his body even though he wishes more than anything else that it would just not. But it’s fine, it’s always fine. He accomplishes the task easily, He was always a fantastic illusionist. He doesn’t answer the door when John comes home five months later. Mrs Hudson doesn’t know John is at the door. He uses a series of mirrors he hung from the ceiling with piano wire to watch John walk away. _

_ John rings the bell, _

_ John reads the sign. _

_ John laces and pulls at the roots of hair hair, kicking the rail of the cafe down below because they are closed on Mondays and no one is there to notice.  _

_ John tings the bell again, and again, and again. _

_ Then, John walks away. _

_ John doesn’t pound on the door. _

_ John doesn’t cry. _

_ John doesn’t love him, and never did.  _

_ He’s absolutely sure of that. _

_ That night, his heart does stop. Or, it gets close enough. He is too far in the floating dark to know the difference. It’s restarted, of course, by his meddling brother, a spray of narcan up his nose and chest compressions that may or may not have been necessary. _

_ He lives another day. _

_ He hates living. _

_ He goes to the psych ward then to rehab then back to Baker’s St. He lasts a month and relapses again. Mycroft wants to threaten to cut off his trust fund, but it never happens. Mycroft knows that threats don’t work.  _

_ Then something strange happens. He is asked on a date. He is offered 2000 pounds to perform his sleight of hand illusions and deduce the older gentlemen over two hours of cocktails. The man tells him that he will not touch him. That all he wants is cocktails and parlor tricks. So, he agrees. The man worships him. The man is delighted by everything he says and does for two hours. The only other person that has ever been delighted by him was John but John doesn’t love him anymore. The man gives him an envelope that contains a 1000 pound tip on top of the agreed upon amount. He sees another envelope in the man’s jacket when he reaches for the one he gives Sherlock. _

_ He _ is Sherlock again.

Sherlock was far better than the just plain  _ he  _ that fell in love with John and hurt Mycroft. Sherlock took his medications militantly, finished school, got his masters and only used drugs recreationally. Sherlock loved being an illusionist-for-hire, which he learned was called a  _ magnificent  _ and that was certainly how Sherlock felt when he met with clients.

Sherlock met Vic as a client that needed a night out and someone to talk to. Vic was in the Royal Air Force. Vic was only deploying one more time before retirement from the military. Vic was ready to move on and stop the constant motion. Vic told Sherlock about being so worn out and done with living in the constant state of anticipating danger. Vic was bloody-fucking-all-out-can’t-get-the-image-out/ of-his-head  _ beautiful _ in so many ways that the butterflies in Sherlock’s stomach started to make him nauseous

Vic had been widowed before and had a step-daughter named Molly. Sherlock fell in love with Molly as well. Molly had a bright future and Sherlock showed her his experiments and his master’s level text books and though she didn’t understand all of it, she found it fascinating and made sure to tell him that. They became friends. Best friends, most of the time. Sherlock didn’t parent Molly very well at all but it was fine because Vic and Mrs Hudson were good at that so he didn’t have to be. Sherlock was allowed to be Molly’s friend and it was good. It was comfortable. Sherlock liked that Molly could just be his friend.

Having already lost a spouse, and knowing how terribly it could hurt, Vic had no problem with the photographs of himself and John that stayed on the mantle. When Vic and Molly moved in, photos of their little family joined Sherlock’s photos of John and Vic told him once that everyone was allowed a first love. On the anniversaries of Vic’s husband’s death, Sherlock called a car to take them to the cemetery. On the anniversaries of losing John, Vic did the same for him except that they snuck into the medical school to visit the chemistry lab that John had caught him breaking into when he was an eighteen year old student and John was a soldier on leave. On the happier anniversaries, they went out to dinner and then to ice cream. 

Vic proposed to Sherlock and they got married before Vic was deployed again. When Vic came home, things were fine, fine until they weren’t. Vic saw a therapist at the VA hospital. Vic got a little better. Their family grew. Vic got a little worse, a little better and then a little worse again. Vic’s roller coaster started to look more like Sherlock’s every day except that Sherlock was on his medication because it was strictly Sherlock that Vic had fallen in love with, not  _ he _ . 

Vic was afraid. Jumpy. Nervous. Restless. Sherlock hated himself for not being able to fix the world so that Vic didn’t have to feel that way. All that he could comfort himself with was that he did not wish that his hands were full of glass because Sherlock was still on his medication. He had been for a very long time.

Everything was fine, though.

They fought Vic’s demons.

There were good days and bad and together they learned to live with it.

Everything was going to be fine.

Sherlock believed that with all of his being. He believed it more than he believed in gravity or the way he liked his tea. It was the truth. The absolute truth. Sherlock would entertain no doubts about that.

Well, not until Vic’s brain and skull fragments were painting the wall behind their couch and he was pulling the limp transport of the love of his life into his arms because he knew there was only so long the coroners would let him hold Vic in his arms.

Sherlock savored every minute of it, and then it was over. This time, no cleaning crew was called. He let Mycroft and Gallefrey take the children to their house overnight so Sherlock could set to work. A bucket of bleach water, two rolls of paper towels, four unredeemable flannels and a large yellow sponge took care of the job. Sherlock still peeled off the wallpaper anyways with Mrs Hudson’s steamer and had painters come. The small job

But, Sherlock didn’t turn into  _ He  _ again. Sherlock continued taking his medication even though he didn’t just fear that he’d lost Vic, as he had felt with John, but  _ knew  _ that it was the case. He had seen it happen. Behind Sherlock’s eyes was an etching of the moment he went from a husband to a widower. Having considered all those facts, standing on coffee tables to unscrew light bulbs and crying in Mycroft’s lap until John brought him medication in a tiny plastic cup wasn’t an option. Sherlock was a father now. There was far too much to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... that just happened. I have been working on two Sherlock pieces and the other one I have 110K words written for but the plot is so convoluted that I have to finish it before posting anything. This I'm sort of writing on the fly but I'm not sure if it will go over very well. This was kind of a "set the scene" chapter and the next, as I've written it, will settle into far more of a normal narrative format.
> 
> I'm bipolar, so I wrote Sherlock's mixed-manic episode as I experience them. I know my experience isn't everyones and I hope that it can be respected. Thanks! Let me know what y'all think.


	2. Eight Days Of Hell, and What We Do For Love

Sunshine in a cemetery seemed, to Sherlock, in poor taste. Logically speaking, he knew that the sun was shining everywhere and it was actually a ball of flaming gasses with absolutely no consciousness to know nor care that there was a funeral happening that day. That didn’t mean he wanted to see it. He was relieved that he had thought to hire someone to put up a tent and acknowledged the irony given that he had asked for such a tent in anticipation of rain. 

***

On the first day after Vic’s death, Sherlock had sat in his chair, staring blankly at nothing at all, until Mycroft wordlessly tilted his head back and dropped artificial tears into the dangerously dry tissue. Molly sat by his feet, her cheek leaning on his knee and he kept a hand on top of her head. The only moments he made were a gentle tussling of her hair when the tears finally came. 

On the second day, he was vaguely aware of his infant son’s exhausted cries coming from the bedroom and Gavin bouncing and shushing him unsuccessfully. He wanted his father. Sherlock made no move to lift himself from the couch. In fact, he made no movement at all. Mycroft continued to administer the eye drops every hour or so and put cups of tea to his lips, which he only swallowed small sips of before letting the scalding liquid drip down his chin and onto his dressing gown. Molly had been moved to Mrs Hudson’s flat. They had said it was for the best.

On the third day, Sherlock heard Mycroft tell Garrett that he may need to be hospitalized. He supposed that Mycroft had told his husband about his stints in hospital but that didn’t take the sting out of being spoken of as if he wasn’t there. His brother also mentioned the option of cremation so the funeral could wait until Sherlock got better and was back home. He hadn’t been hospitalized since he was twenty, and he hadn’t had a breakdown at all since he became a Magnificent. So Sherlock got up out of the chair he had been sitting and sleeping in since the night Vic died exactly two meters from where he was sitting. He did it without speaking to his brother, who was still camped out on their sofa. He slowly stripped out of his clothes that were ripe with 72 hours of wear, and got into a shower so hot it left three blisters on his neck. No one ever saw them. A straight razor and the sweet burn of aftershave provided a convincing illusion of being alive. That, he hoped they noticed. Sherlock wore only a towel when he went to his bedroom and Lestrade excused himself- holding the four month old in his arms- and allowed Sherlock the privacy to dress. While his lounge wear called his name, he instead selected a dark grey suit with a white shirt, black oxfords, and a matching belt. He untangled his hair until it was only the usual amount of disheveled, then walked past the kitchen towards the sitting room and took his son from Grant’s arms. His older brother and his husband still stayed.

On the fourth day, Molly went back to her bedroom. Sherlock told Mycroft what he thought that Vic would have wanted, as he had been left no instructions. No funeral home service or wake. Vic was to be buried at the family cemetery. In the end, no Holmes could escape the ancestral grounds. Mummy called, and Mycroft answered the phone and whispered plative reassurances that the children were fine, that Sherlock was fine, and even that he, Garth and Mrs Hudson were fine. It was a lie. 

On the fifth day, Sherlock resumed being a decent father- well, as decent as he had ever been. Mycroft told him that he was doing fine. Neither he nor Griffin had left since the morning after Vic died, other than to pick up take away to feed themselves and Molly or to step outside to take a sensitive phone call. He found the address book in a kitchen drawer, not allowing himself to be charmed over the fact that Vic was probably the last person on earth that still kept one. It was easy enough to deduce which names belonged to those that were something more than fellow aircraftmen, and seven dutiful responses of _‘of course, and if you need anything else, don’t hesitate to ask’_ was as simple as seven phone calls away. Everyone had always liked Vic. Sherlock would ask them for nothing else.

On the sixth day, there was a letter from Vic’s flight sergeant, who volunteered to speak at the funeral. Sherlock hadn’t intended for anyone to speak, but called to accept. He hadn’t heard the man’s voice in at least a year, but Vic had listened to him every day for at least 6 months a year since joining the Royal Air Force long before the two of them had met. Sherlock knew the number of years- the dates had been stored in his mind palace- but he chose not to look for them. What did it matter? That evening, he combed through Molly’s closet trying to find something suitable for her to wear to the burial that she hadn’t grown out of. He concluded that they would need to go to Harrods.

On the seventh day, he left Mycroft to listen for the cries of his fourth month old son, and took Molly to find a dress. And shoes. In the end, a silver dress with a matching jacket and black ballet flats would have to suffice. Molly found him a thin black tie and he accepted that she was probably right. He needed to wear one. Sherlock paid the clerk without looking at the total. It didn’t matter. The money was there. Sherlock had always made sure it was. 

On the eighth day, Sherlock dressed in the black suit he had only worn once and kept the dried flower pinned to its breast. What did it hurt? Vic wasn't there to chastise him for being careless. He missed it. They left right after a sparse breakfast that was the first bite of food Sherlock had eaten in over a week. They rode with Mycroft and Gary to the cemetery. Their mother insisted that their father help with their bags. There were none. Sherlock wanted to return to the sheets that still smelled like athletic deodorant, coconut shampoo and the sweat of the last time they’d made love.

The coffin was draped with a Union flag and carried by six fellow soldiers. Flight Sergeant Crisp spoke and his words were kind. Three shots were fired and the sound was thick in his ears. Seven guns thick, to be exact. It was the wrong word to describe the depth of the sound, Sherlock would months later decide the term he was looking for was _in unison_ , but nothing else came to mind and he was not going to dive into his mind palace to retrieve it. That day, he wasn’t sure if he was going to go back to his mind palace at all. He wasn’t sure that he could without losing himself within its corridors.

Molly remained buried under his arm, wiping the snot that dripped from her nose on his lapel. His son spit up on his shoulder. Sherlock felt no will to wipe either of them off or offer anyone a handkerchief. The only thing warming him from the block of ice in his stomach that made his torso shiver was the feeling of his children being with him. They were safe. Molly was devastated and Sherlock knew that his son had gone from waking once or twice a night to every half hour when Mycroft was taking care of him. After his catatonic state lifted enough to act when he cried, Sherlock noticed that it became every hour instead. Not good, but better. Better was all he could expect. 

Sherlock didn’t pay attention to the rest of the service. There was music, and he didn’t hear it. There were cards of condolence handed out, and Sherlock’s was placed underneath the two fingers he felt he could lift without losing his hold of the sleeping baby on his shoulder, but he would never read it. Vic’s flag was folded and Flight Sergeant Crisp approached with it in his slightly outstretched arms, stopping short when Molly backed up further into Sherlock’s embrace and turned to hide her eyes completely. He leaned down as well as he could, kissed the top of her head. “That’s yours, Molls. He wants you to take it.”

“I don’t want to.” Is what he thought he heard her mumble and he kissed the top of her head again, not lifting his head this time until he heard her breath steady into something that no longer resembled hyperventilation. 

Sherlock was not going to try to force her. Instead, he held her a little tighter. “That’s okay too. That’s just fine, little love.”

Mycroft moved to take the infant from his arms- his eyes alarmed with fear he would be dropped in Sherlock’s distracted state- except that Sherlock did not _get_ distracted. He shook his head in refusal, which for once was respected. He had it under control. Or, he hoped they believed he had it under control. Eventually, after a long minute of indecision and tears, Geoff stepped forward and accepted the flag from Flight Sergeant Crisp. It was the salt-and-pepper haired detective inspector that then knelt down to Molly’s level, smiled softly and oh-so-gently maneuvered her arm by her wrist to tuck it under. Molly clung to it. He would be Gregory from that point forth. The man had earned his name.

And then it was over.

His parents had insisted that they at least eat before going back home, and by the time they were back at the flat it was dark and damp and the silence was deafening. Sherlock could imagine Vic bounding out from the kitchen with open arms and asking them both what they could possibly be sulking over and then insisting that whatever it was could be fixed with a cuppa and pink wafers. Usually, actually almost exclusively, Vic was right. When it came to matters of the heart, Vic made Sherlock feel like an idiot.

Neither of them changed into more comfortable or less rained on clothes and it was only seven o’clock in the evening when Sherlock put his son in his crib, and laid down next to Molly in his bed. Her face was buried in Vic’s pillow, and Sherlock could not deny the slightly suffocating jealousy that bubbled in his gut but, of course, he let her have it. Truth be told, he doubted he could live with denying her much of anything for a very, very, very long time. They both fell asleep before nine without any supper, but it was better that way. Maybe the rumbling in their bellies would stir their minds until the motion brought them back to life. Maybe they could wake up, and the last eight days could be nothing but a terrible dream.

***

Sherlock startled awake when Mycroft poked his umbrella at the floor in the same way a certain fourteen-year-old he knew would stomp her foot every time she heard the word _‘no’_ which wasn’t often because Sherlock simply could not say no to Molly.

“Do you have even the slightest idea where your children are right now? Or are you too strung out to notice that it is eleven in the morning and you haven’t heard your son cry or your step-daughter put the kettle on?”

Sherlock tried to stand again but it was hopeless and found himself precariously balanced on his side but in a well enough state to not flop onto his back and moan in pain. “He is with Mrs Hudson, I always collect him in the morning when clients are over. It’s also a Tuesday, Mrs Hudson feeds them breakfast on weekdays, I haven’t gotten any calls from the administration and my _step-_ step-daughter is aware that I can track her phone at any time so Molly is at school where she belongs. I’ve got it under control." He reached for his dresser and opened the pill bottle that sat on top of it, swallowing two oxycodone and a lorazepam dry and very much looking forward to them taking effect. The second two pills he took were much less fun, but just as necessary. Sherlock had long since gotten used to the vile aftertaste of lamotrigine. He had been taking it for ten years.

“You have your answers, why are you still here?”

His brother, the _real_ British government, frowned like a pouting fish in one of his son’s storybooks and Sherlock couldn’t help but save that image to snicker at later. He couldn’t do so then because there was, unfortunately, little dignity in snickering. When it came to conversing with his older brother, his dignity was all he had left.

“You brought a client back to the flat that you share with your children. Again.” Mycroft said, poking him in the ribs with the point of his umbrella even thought he had already opened his eyes. “I pray to God that you used protection.”

Sherlock rolled to sit up, and peaked under the sheet to find that he had put his pants back on in the night, likely when he had gotten up to check on the children. “Why would I do that, dear brother? They’re paying for a pound of my flesh and I am nothing if not an honest salesman.” He rolled his eyes at his brother’s lack of attention paid to the torn open condom and dental dam wrappers on top of the waste basket. “I saw him out before midnight, Myc. He never was at any risk of encountering the children.”

He scoffed at the use of his childhood nickname. “Do you realize the number of diseases that you have likely acquired over the years?”

The pulsing behind his eyes started the moment he tried to stand and Sherlock fell back onto the bed. “Fuck.” He gagged, his stomach visibly rolling as it tried to expel its contents, despite the fact that all it held was a handful of pills. Typically, he had several drinks during his meetings and the night before had been no exception. It would not have been much of a problem, if he had eaten anything other than the olives in his martini.

“Are you going to be ill?” Mycroft frantically clambered around the room until he found a bin lined with a plastic bag.

Sherlock pushed it away, the wave of nausea passing quickly but the pain in his head worsening by the second. “Piss off. I’m fine. Leave.”

“As disappointing as this might be, I did not come all the way here to scold you over your incessant need to turn your body into a human petri dish. Gregory requires a consult and it may actually entail some leg work which will pay accordingly.” Which to Mycroft tended to mean that he himself would be depositing money into Sherlock's account in 3-5 business days. “Perhaps it will even keep you off your back for an evening or two.”

“As a detective?” Sherlock asked without a trace of hope in his tone, real or otherwise. It was rare that his brother-in-law took the risk of bringing him in for an official consult, instead of just employing him to catalogue evidence and text him tips of what to re-examine. It was even rarer for Mycroft to not try to stop it.

 _“Until you are no longer selling your body and mind to the highest bidder to pay for your drug habit, you have no place working in any branch of government.”_ _He said with his nose in the air._

That Christmas dinner at their parents’ estate had been terribly uncomfortable.

Sherlock did not have a drug habit. He was not an addict. He shot up fewer times in the last year than he used to in a single day. Letting Mycroft assume that the money was for cocaine and heroin was a lot easier than dealing with the fallout of telling him the truth. Where his money was spent was his own bloody business and no one else's. 

Mycroft shook his head with a wrinkled nose, as if he could smell the thousands of people he had convinced himself that Sherlock had slept with in this room when it was far closer to a hundred. Sherlock’s fees were enough to deter most clients from paying for _the complete experience_. 

“No, as a magnificent. Undercover work.” The look of disgust worsened but he went on. “One of your lot was caught performing compromising acts behind a skip near a cocktail lounge that you’ve used to host clients. She claims that there are underage magnificents doing private shows in a back room. As you know, private shows are not covered in the legal grey area in which you’ve chosen to operate and neither are minors.”

“I’m aware.” He groaned, wiping the sleep from his eyes. “She’s not _‘my lot’_ by the way. If you ordered Gregory to arrest me tomorrow, he would find no evidence on which to do so. Have you got the file?” Sherlock stretched out a hand and accepted a stiff cardstock folder and let out another huff upon opening it.

The Prixie Bridge was not exactly a favorite spot of his and hadn’t been for a number of years, as the upper class clients he preferred the company of would never be caught dead so much as looking towards the front door. It was dirty, low lit in all the wrong ways, and ungraciously out in the open. It was no wonder that their informant had been caught. Even the skips provided no coverage for that alleyway and every prostitute pretending they could palm read used the same place. If the police stepped inside at any given time, they would struggle to decide who to put in handcuffs first.

“These descriptions are familiar to me. I think the redhead is Jeremey. He is at least twenty-one and he keeps a full dance card without offering private shows. The second description is likely Meredith, who I’ve never seen any identification for but is at least twenty-four. As far as the third goes, _‘blond and strung out on coke’_ is not much to go on in this profession.” He closed the folder and handed it back to his brother, shaking his head and regretting it instantly as the pounding worsened. “All she’s trying to do is convince someone to offer her a deal.”

Mycroft accepted the folder with a nod of his head. “Thank you. I will let him know.”

“How much?”

His older brother rolled his eyes once more. “Does two hundred sound fair, considering it took no more than two minutes of your time?”

That was a week of groceries and a night of take away.

“Cash. I’m light at the moment.”

“I’ll have it for you this evening if you would like to bring the children and stay for supper. Gregory is making a roast and parmesan risotto.”

As tempting as that was, given that those were his favorites, Sherlock declined. “Busy tonight, but you can take the kids. I know that’s what you want anyways. Molly gets out of school at three-thirty.”

“Thank you.” His voice was soft. “A client?”

Sherlock shook his head. “A blind date.”

“Oh really now? I’m surprised you would entertain the idea of performing for free given the state of your finances.” Mycroft pursed his lips. “You must be feeling quite generous. _Hooker with a heart of gold_ is the trope, is it not?”

“Shut up and give me my money. I know you carry enough of it to keep from leaving a papertrail.” He reached his hand out and, begrudgingly, Mycroft dug out his wallet and handed him a pair of hundred pound notes, one of which he handed back. “Smaller bills and keep twenty to give Molls. She’ll need lunch money tomorrow.”

His brother sighed but obliged. Sherlock folded the bills and put them in a canister by his bedside where he kept most of the tips left by his clients. Other than what Mycroft had handed him, it was more or less empty. The work he did a few days a week at New Scotland Yard paid the rent, utilities and bare necessities, leaving Molly’s tuition to be paid by other means. Enrolling her in an all girls school had been the only hard parenting decision that Sherlock had put his foot down on and Vic had let him have his way. No matter what it cost him, he could not bring himself to regret it. Molly was a good kid.

“As I can’t imagine you will remember to do it, I will contact the school and have her informed that Gregory and I will be picking her up.”

Sherlock fumbled for his phone and picked it up, shooting off a text to Molly that she would see between classes. “It's handled. Don’t call her school unless you want to become a nuisance in her life just as you are in mine. My daughter seems to still be naive enough to like you and unless you want that to change, let her breathe. Or do you never wonder how I would have turned out had you given me legroom to be my own man?”

“A padded room was far more your forte, brother mine.”

Several surprisingly well aimed books from a nearby pile was all it took to send Mycroft out of his bedroom, out of his flat and out of the front door. Sherlock hadn’t been hospitalized since losing… well for a very long bloody time at the very least. Showering and checking the clock repeatedly while he dressed, Sherlock grumbled to himself about his brother lacking any clue of what he sacrificed for his family. Both of his children would have every advantage possible if he had to sell a kidney to make it happen. They were worth every moment of pain and degradation he had endured. That included the humiliation of those ridiculous card tricks.

Fuck, he hated the card tricks.

Freshly shaven, hair tousled expertly, and breath minty fresh, Sherlock gave himself one last look in the mirror before he collected the envelope from the night before and took a cab to drop it off where it belonged. Both cab rides included, it took no more than an hour which was why he arrived at The Beverly Club two hours too early for his date.

“Holmes, you’ve got a client tonight?” Randall called from behind the bar as he was polishing the crystal champagne glasses for the evening. “I thought the bloke last night was your last one for a minute or two?”

Sherlock smirked and sat at the bar, a gin and tonic appearing in front of him almost by magic. It wasn’t, obviously, but given that Randall was also a magnificent, the use of sleight of hand in his bartending was an attractive draw for potential clients. Randall was a show off and, Sherlock had decided long ago, not an idiot.

He sipped his drink. “You are correct. I’m on leave until tourist season. I’m meeting a friend of a friend for drinks.”

“You on a blind date?”

_Is that not what I said?_

“Believe me, I’m as surprised as you are.”

For a while they bantered, then bickered, picked apart several patrons to keep their wits sharp and Sherlock even took over tending bar while Randall stepped out for a cigarette. Sherlock didn’t pay much attention to the passing of time until it was two minutes until his date was about to begin. That was because at exactly four fifty-eight, his date walked through the front doors with a cane, a limp, and an oatmeal colored jumper.

"Sherlock… Sherlock Holmes...” The man whispered almost to himself as he hobbled forward, grabbed the magnificent by the chin, and stared deeply into his eyes. “Where have you been and how the hell are you alive?”


	3. After Sherlock Holmes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Where has John Watson been for the last ten years? I'm glad you asked.

After coming home from Afghanistan giddy with anticipation of seeing the (likely strung out, off his medication and in need of compassion, help and endless cuddles) love of his life,  _ then _ learning that that love was in all likelihood buried in a mahogany box at his family’s estate, John Watson measured time differently. The month, the day and the year still existed and he referred to it when necessary, but to him a new era had begun.

A. S. H

After Sherlock Holmes.

That was what he thought about when he woke up every morning and tried to get his bearings after either dreaming of war from his sister’s guest bedroom or dreaming of London from a tent in the middle of a warzone. Then, there were the dreams of Sherlock. His music. His laughter. His ranting and raving and carrying on about scientific discoveries, who he thought was an idiot or all the ways he loved John. Those dreams helped John remember that the incredible man had been real, and that he was gone. John had rarely dreamed of Sherlock when he was holding him, and if he did they were dreams of another nature entirely. Most of the time, they would wake up and help each other make them come true.

**Two Months A. S. H.**

When Clara, the often enabling wife of his alcoholic sister, took the bottle from his hand and told him that he had a problem, John Watson knew that it had to be true. The problem was that John and Clara disagreed on exactly what that problem was. She believed that he was on a road to drinking himself to death with grief. He knew that no amount of liquor he poured down his throat was enough to forget the ache in his chest and the tightness in his throat.

He stopped anyway.

**Five Months A. S. H.**

John had taken up running. He had taken up running until the soles of his feet developed deep blisters, there was little skin on the back of his ankle, every item of clothing he owned stunk with sweat even when they had been laundered several times and he could carry home dozens of bagged canned goods on each arm without flinching. All this running wouldn’t have been a problem, if John Watson had also taken up eating. 

Every time he sat down to a meal, all he saw was food that he would never again get to try to coax Sherlock to eat. As a doctor, he knew that he was burning calories he didn’t have to spare, which was why it was not at all surprising to John when he fainted on his sister’s kitchen floor after chugging three glasses of water in an effort to cool himself down and catch his breath. His blood sugar and sodium levels were dangerously low, and he was urged to start taking proper care of himself. This time it was his sister, Harry, who was enough of a manipulator to dangle in front of John the prospect of not passing his physical examinations required for his next deployment. Leaving London seemed like the only hope he had to leave the constant need to look for Sherlock on every sidewalk and at every cafe. To force him to give up his habit of running by Baker’s St and hoping the FOR RENT sign was gone and had been a prank or a mistake.

He started forcing himself to drink meal supplements.

**Nine Months A. S. H.**

It was on Sherlock’s birthday that John first heard the voice of his dead boyfriend tell him that he was an idiot. Later, eight years later to be exact, his therapist would insist that John recognize that he did not  _ hear  _ Sherlock’s voice. He simply had dedicated a part of his general train of thought to imagining what Sherlock would say if he had been there. It didn’t matter to John how the voice came about, because it was far better than forgetting the sound of it entirely.

John was looking at birthday cakes at Tesco, trying to decide between chocolate and vanilla frosting. Clara and Harry had accepted his suggestion that it would be beneficial to celebrate Sherlock’s birthday with a dinner at home. To John, treating the day like an actual birthday was essential. They were celebrating the birth of the love of his life. If John had known the date of his death, he would have insisted they mourn it as well. Except, there was not a single day that John Watson did not mourn Sherlock Holmes. How could there have been? He was still gone every day of the bloody year.

There he was, deliberating, when his mind manufactured the most beautiful sound he had heard in a year. 

**_Idiot. I didn’t like either of them. Grocery store baked goods taste no better than the plastic packaging they come in. Go to the coffee shop that I used to stop by on my way to class. I loved the red velvet cake and the cranberry scones._ **

At the time, John brushed it off to his own creative way of remembering something that Sherlock likely had told him at one time or another. He left Tesco, picked up three slices of cake and several scones for the morning and went home to order chinese. He pretended, for one night, that Sherlock wasn’t dead. It would have been just like him to be late to, or skip entirely, his own birthday dinner. Forcing Sherlock to stick to a schedule would have been like bathing a feral cat. Clara and Harry let him ramble on, sharing the stories he could with his family, and not looking towards the door in hopes that Sherlock would walk through it.

He stopped pretending when morning came and Sherlock still wasn’t there.

**1 year & 2 Months A. S. H.**

It was during mail call when John, for the third time, did not bother to check if he had any letters, that he was asked about Sherlock. 

Thomas, a paramedic that he had actually chosen to get a pint with every now and again when they were home, opened several cards drawn by his six-year-old twins and eyed John carefully. “Trouble in paradise, mate? That boyfriend of yours… Sherlock, was it? To be honest I’m surprised you’re even here. I thought you were going to propose and not reenlist.”

John shook his head. “I was- I mean that was the plan. Umm… Sherlock passed away.”

“Oh Johnny…”

A short humorously huff choked out of his throat. “A drug overdose during my last deployment, probably. I wasn’t there and his family isn’t talking to me. I think it was intentional.” It was the first time he said the words out loud in such a way and the fact that his eyes remained dry was a bloody miracle.

**_Stop being so sentimental, John. It doesn't suit you. Really, it doesn’t suit anyone, but I never cared about them. Only you. Always you._ **

“Shit, mate, I’m sorry. I knew he had problems but I didn’t know…”

“He had been suicidal before.” John picked up a stick and started carving at the dusty ground, making swirls to avoid accidentally writing Sherlock’s name in the dirt. “His brother promised to keep an eye on him but Sherlock was always great at giving someone the slip.”

**_I certainly fooled you, didn’t I? I said I was fine, and you’re the idiot that believed me._ **

Thomas accepted his answer and three weeks later gave him a tin of condolence biscuits that his wife had baked and put in the mail when she heard the news. John thanked him. He was too nauseous to eat the biscuits and gave them away one night at dinner so they wouldn’t go stale.

The rest of his tour was fine. So was the next. The one after that was decent as well, as were the several others that followed. He went over to save lives and that’s what he did. Besides holiday and birthday cards from his sister, John never had a reason to get up and walk over with his fellow soldiers for mail call. There was no one left to write him long rambling letters about chemistry, forensics and discovering the streets of London one long walk at a time.

He would have given anything for one more letter.

**6 Years & 3 Months A.S.H.**

John had almost forgotten about the never ending tightness in his throat and ache in his chest that accompanied this era of this life, when he received a large flat envelope that had been stamped as an important legal document. It even required a signature, which was odd because he had never heard any fellow soldiers be asked to do that, even with documents during a divorce or the sale of their homes. Still, he signed for it, almost hoping it was some type of impossibly thin and specifically targeted IED so he could be blown into pieces too small to put back together into a corpse to be buried. He had been blown by everything and everyone else over the last several years, whether it be blown off, blown over or a sloppy blow job that he pretended was being performed by a witty chemist with a mad gleam in his eye.

It had been only in the last year or two that John was able to admit to himself the true nature of the man he still loved more than life itself. Sherlock Holmes, had been a genius. There was no other logical explanation of all of the facts, and Sherlock had drilled into John’s head that holding such a high standard was a necessity. 

He had also been naive and prone to being manipulated. Why else would someone so beautiful- in mind, body and soul- have been with John Watson? All he had had to offer Sherlock was love, and it obviously wasn’t enough to make him stay.

Lastly, and most painfully, Sherlock Holmes was positively mad. Not every individual, in fact not  _ most  _ individuals, with bipolar disorder would have fit under John’s particular definition of mad. Sherlock had always been the exception to most rules, including that one. He had been paranoid, delusional and narcissistic. Alright, fine, he wasn’t a textbook narcissist. Instead of lacking empathy, he lacked sympathy. He felt for others. John knew this because even when Mycroft was somber, Sherlock obviously wanted to make him feel better in his own way. The problem always was that Sherlock didn’t understand why Mycroft looked at him as if he had broken his heart when his hands were bandaged from being full of glass or his arm burned into a four inch long blister because he used a bunsen burner while convinced he was going to concoct a cure for the common cold from the convenience of their kitchen. 

Perhaps Sherlock would have lived if he understood how deeply and truly John had loved him.

**_I knew, John. How could I not have? You said it every day, all day, incessantly. It simply wasn’t enough. No one could keep me grounded, it wasn’t specific to you._ **

John opened the envelope and pulled out the paperwork within, scanning only the first three lines before vomit began to climb up his esophagus. He let it. Coughing, sputtering, and spitting into the sandy dirt attracted the attention of two of his fellow soldiers, but he waved them off and wiped his lips.

“Bad news?” Thomas asked, undeterred unlike the rest of them.  
John nodded. “You could say that. Sherlock’s family hasn’t said a word to me in over six years and now they are asking me to transfer his trust fund into the name of some kid named Molly Hooper.”

**_Who is Molly Hooper? I didn’t know anyone named Molly Hooper, and I knew nearly everything and everyone. I could have found out about them, in any case. My family does ever so love to feel self righteous and philanthropic. She’s probably some kid with cancer wanting to do an experimental treatment in the states. That certainly sounds like something my idiot brother would want to do._ **

“Why would they have to ask you to do that?”

Again, he spit onto the ground as he tried to rid his mouth of the taste so he wouldn’t get sick again. “When his brother wanted to hospitalize him, Sherlock had paperwork drawn up and named me his lasting power of attorney and executor of his will. Nothing ever came of it until now and I assumed whoever oversaw the money had handled it but obviously not.”

“Are you going to sign it?” Thomas leaned over the paperwork as John flipped through and let out a low whistle. “Blimey! That’s a lot of zeros. I say keep it. Restitution for pain and suffering.”

He shook his head. “I don’t want it. I never wanted Sherlock for the money, and I had no idea how much there was. My assumption is neither did he or he would have blown it on coke and smack in record time.”

“They never got him help, which is all the more reason to make them give their own bloody money to whoever Molly Hooper is and keep what you’ve got coming to you.”

From his front pocket, John plucked out a pen and signed his name at the bottom with initials in several places throughout the document. “They lost their son and brother. No one needs me to make that more painful. Besides, I never gave them any reason to hate me and I’m sure as fuck not going to start justifying their feelings now. Can you witness this for me?”

Thomas didn’t want to, John could read it all over his face, but he was a good person and did it anyway. He put his name and date where requested and handed it back with his lips in a hard line. “There. Done.”

“Thanks.” John mumbled, putting it into the return envelope that he would hand back the next day when everyone else was returning letters to their parents, wives and children. “I lied, by the way.”

“What do you mean?”

He chuckled. “When I said I never gave them a reason to hate me, that wasn’t true. I gave them a hundred of them, probably. Did you know that Sherlock was ten years younger than me? He was eighteen when we got together.”

“What?”

“I had graduated university, then medical school, then been to war  _ twice  _ by the time he and I met. It’s fucked up and I wouldn’t admit it then but even worse I still think about him every time I’m shagging any anonymous bloke from the bar. Hell, even with my last two boyfriends, I never thought about them when we shagged. It was Sherlock. Only nineteen-years-old-when-he-died, Sherlock.” 

**_Pervert. Not that I particularly minded. Genius deserves an audience in the laboratory, the concert hall and the bedroom. And oh, did you watch with delight._ **

John hung his head and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. It had been ages since a Holmes made him cry. The trait was genetic, apparently. “I can’t even imagine what he would have looked like as a man. Not a kid that can technically buy booze but was still all limbs like a baby giraffe, I mean. Every time I try, all I can think about is all the things that he can’t do because of me. The things that he will never be able to do, because I insisted that he was fine and that I could help him better than trained psychiatric professionals. Christ, I’m a surgeon. What was I thinking?”

“That your love would be enough,” Thomas answered, making it clear that it was a statement and not a suggestion. “Probably because everyone always says it's supposed to be, but it isn’t. When people are sick like he was, it never is.”

He sent that paperwork back the next day, and tried to put it out of his mind. John failed of course, because Sherlock Holmes and anything he could get his hands on regarding him never left his mind for more than an hour or two.

**7 Years & 5 Months A.S.H.**

First and foremost, let it be known that Gregory Lestrade was absolutely  _ not  _ proud of what he agreed to do to force his little brother-in-law to finally get, and keep, his act together. He had been given the requested five years of clean drug tests required to do Sherlock the small but utterly cruel favor and it was his turn to pay up. The drug tests were faked using a chemical compound of the genius’s design, but neither Mycroft nor Gregory had known that.

Later he would argue that, in his defense, all he had been trying to do was save the punk- but smart as a whip- kid from a short but sure path towards catastrophic implosion that would have also taken out Gregory’s husband. Well, at least his heart. So he knocked on Harriet and Clara Watson’s front door one week after Mycroft told him John Watson had gotten home from Afghanistan yet again. For a moment, until the door was answered, Lestrade allowed himself to think about how ridiculously long it had been since the british had first gone to the middle east. Little did he know that, in total, it would go on for thirteen years and that John Watson would be there for nearly all of them.  _ Nearly _ all of them.

Then, cutting his musings short, he was face to face with the saddest man he had ever seen.

***

“Are you Doctor John Hamish Watson?” The detective in front of him asked, the badge hanging from around his neck being the only indication that he wasn’t just another Londoner in business attire and a tan trench coat delivering a box to John’s sister’s front door.

John crossed his arms and put his feet shoulder’s distance apart. “Yes. Who are you?”

“I’m detective inspector Lestrade with New Scotland Yard.” The taller and graying haired man said, with a tight lipped smile. An uncomfortable smile. A very-bad-news smile that John was not unfamiliar with putting on when faced with grim prospects such as when a man, who he had just pulled three bullets from the spine of, asked if he would walk again. 

“I’ll be honest with you, Doctor Watson. This box was in evidence storage for some time and no one has any idea where it came from. Record keeping has been so bad over there for a while now but there wasn’t a case number so technically it is no longer evidence. It’s just a box of random things. When we opened it up we found instructions of who to deliver it to.”

He eyed the box wearily, having seen plenty of innocent looking containers of all kinds blow up and take soldier’s limbs with them. Not that he would have objected to being blown up on that day any more than he would have a year and two months prior, mind you, but preferred it not be on the front steps of his sister’s flat.

“What’s in it?”

The detective chuckled with obvious discomfort. “I’m not entirely sure, just odds and ends. A photo album, a few journals, a pretty realistic human skull if I’ve ever seen one, a couple of dozen CDs, a broken violin bow, a pack of black socks-“

John knew that the detective had noticed the complete draining of color from his face. He didn’t care. He couldn’t have cared. All he could consider was that what were so obviously Sherlock’s belongings, that he had left to John, had been put in an evidence locker. Someone had seen it fit to put them there. To take evidence from an occurrence at Baker’s Street confirmed without a doubt that something terrible had happened there. Of course Mycroft would have squashed any case from being pursued or records from being kept, which was why John and the detective before him couldn’t find any information on a case this would belong to. If Sherlock didn’t have his precious skull, it was because he was no longer alive to have it. John could think of no reason he would have abandoned it with a box of mementos from their relationship. And, there was a note. Sherlock had written him a note. Not a letter back, but a note.

People write letters expecting a reply. Sherlock had consistently written him letters during his first deployment to Afghanistan. All of Sherlock’s letters, even those written when he was nothing but level headed and medicated, had ended with  _ ‘P.S. Write back immediately.’  _ which always made him smile at the fact that he was a lovesick idiot that was so terribly lucky to have found a lovesick idiot of his own.

People write notes as a one way exchange. They either don’t prompt a response at all or there is not a way to get it where it must go. Specifically, if there was no longer a person to send it back to. 

Maybe John could live with that.

If Sherlock’s words were as perfect as he had always been, maybe that note could last him a lifetime.

Detective Inspector Lestrade opened the box under his arm without any prompting and handed him the note, which did look a whole hell of a lot like Sherlock’s letters to him. “Here. Maybe this helps. The name looks like an alias to me and we weren’t able to pull it up in our system so I don’t know.”

Looking back, John wasn’t sure how he mustered the will to pull the note from its envelope, which had obviously been carefully opened before when it was still a mystery of what to do with the box’s content. Come to think of it, he wasn’t quite sure what to do with the box’s content either. Much like Sherlock, John also did not like not knowing things. The note was on thick textured paper that smelled like the lining of a certain Belstaff coat and stale cigarette smoke. Very surprisingly, it was only one page. John had never received any letter from Sherlock that was less than four pages long. Except that this was not a letter, he had to remind himself. It was a note. It was goodbye. 

_ Dear Dr John Waston, _

_ My love, I could write for the rest of my life and not begin to adequately express my gratitude for all the things you have done and the ways you have loved me. I could write another, much longer, lifetime entirely on the subject of the things that I regret doing because they hurt you. All that I can do is thank you and apologize to you for all the things that I was, and that I did, that in the end came back to you. My soldier, John Watson. The beautiful, wonderful, name that was on my lips with my dying breath. _

_ God, I love you. I was so lucky for the opportunity to love you and I cannot express how terrible I feel over how I squandered it. All I can ask is that you let me try to love you more in death than I did in life. _

_ Do not cry. Do not mourn. Never stop being the soldier in love with danger that I fell so madly in love with. Be strong, and know that I will be waiting. _

_ Until we meet again,  _

_ William Sherlock Scott Holmes _

As painful as it had been to read, John was grateful. Having pieces of Sherlock was something to be grateful for. Like the dreams, they were proof that he was real. Proof that somewhere at an estate that John would likely be barred from entering for the rest of his days, Sherlock lay below damp ground that had long since been covered over by green grass. Hopefully, someone was putting flowers by his grave every day, as the minimal tribute required for such a miraculous man.

In the hours that followed, when he was laying in bed beside the casual hook-up that John called back specifically because he was a screamer in hope that his volume would block out the words that were circling in his mind, John feared that he would stop hearing Sherlock’s voice altogether.

He was relieved to find out the next morning that he was wrong.

**10 Years and 1 Month A.S.H**

John knew for a fact that he was an idiot.

He was an idiot for loving a mad genius.

He was an idiot for leaving the mad genius to fend off his own demons.

He was an idiot for denying that he had lost that mad genius until he was faced with the glaring reality that Sherlock had left 221B, his favorite place in the world, which meant he had left the land of the living entirely. 

He was an idiot for drinking, running, starving, celebrating, whining and fucking his way around facing the grief of losing the mad genius.

He was even an idiot for letting himself get shot two years prior in Afghanistan, despite not actually caring if he got shot for the entire eight years he had been in an active war zone since Sherlock’s death. The idiotic part was that he had let himself be wounded instead of killed but didn’t have the courage to finish the job or the ability to pass a physical to reenlist and run away.

Given all this, it did not come as a shock to John that he was enough of an idiot to not protest when Mike Stamford suggested he go on a blind date, with a magnificent of all people. Just because he was a soldier didn’t mean he had the bollocks to tell someone he actually cared about  _ ‘no’ _ when they were so enthusiastic about the prospect of John and this friend getting together.

Imagine his surprise when he walked into one of the most expensive restaurants and cocktail lounges in London only to see a tall, curly dark haired, high cheek boned, beautiful lipped and stunning eyed  _ not- _ stranger waiting for him at a high top table near the bar. No, this man was less of a stranger to John than his own mother. Any remaining chubbiness in his cheeks was gone, he certainly had filled out in the toned-and-still-too-skinny way and he was wearing a tailored suit, but John Watson would have known him anywhere. He could have picked him out of any crowd in any stadium in the entirety of the world.

“Sherlock… Sherlock Holmes…” John’s voice faltered and he reached out to grab onto his chin so he could touch the face he dreamed of for the last ten years and hold him just hard enough to prove that he wouldn’t float away. Or, perhaps even to prevent him from doing so. “Where have you been and how the hell are you alive?”


	4. A Chemist With History

As a chemist holding a masters degree, Sherlock Holmes was an excellent cook. Did he enjoy eating? No, but that did not exclude him from being able to neutralize acids, control temperature, and utilize his senses to determine what variable required alteration to achieve the intended result. That was why the tomato bisque that arrived without any prompting- only an empathetic smile from Randall- was particularly offensive. It was too heavy on the basil with no effort made to reduce the likelihood that the tomato based soup would cause highly unpleasant indigestion.

Neither of them touched the soups or pieces of garlic toast and they had long since gone cold.

Instead, John Watson was on his second brandy and Sherlock simply watched him drink until the doctor’s hand stopped shaking, his jaw unclenched and his breathing returned to a naturally steady rise and fall of his chest.

“I hate this.” John grumbled into his glass, finishing it off and setting it back on the table. “I hate being angry with you.”

Oh dear god, had Sherlock heard that from him before.

“There’s no need to lie, John. Not when I deserve your anger, in any case.”

The man across from him scoffed. “Shut up, just shut the fuck up until I don’t want to strangle you unless you still have a bloody death wish.”

He listened. What else was one to do when faced with a fuming man who had both saved lives and ended them in a desert for a decade? Waiting at the silent table in the quietly humming lounge, Sherlock felt the last ten years on his shoulders like a boulder that did not care how straight he had stood and was utterly unimpressed by the price of his suits. Again, he was nineteen standing on top of a coffee table with glass in his hands, listening to John Watson tell him that he was to come down immediately. Much like then, Sherlock felt the unmistakable need to jump and send himself into well deserved oblivion. Perhaps he hadn’t actually been in the throes of a particularly nasty mixed manic episode, all that time ago. Maybe wanting to protect, sob, and die was a natural response to staring down the only thing more terrifying than the barrel of a loaded gun.

Swirling his third drink, John spoke softer than before. “There is a particular amount of drunk that I need to be before I can have this conversation with you. Too little, and I may actually break that pretty little nose of yours. Too much, and I will cry like the biggest sap you have ever met. The problem is that I have no idea what amount that is and am currently in the uncomfortable predicament of experiencing both almost simultaneously.”

While wondering how exactly John knew that his nose was still pretty despite exclusively trying to glare wounds into Sherlock’s eyes for the last hour, he realized that he hadn’t responded. That was likely a positive thing, as John hadn’t prompted him to do so and still appeared just as likely to break the aforementioned nose if given a reason to do so. 

More interesting than all of that was the way John’s words sounded so much like his own. It was clearly a defense mechanism that could be turned on and off based on the need of the protection offered by flowery language, and that only intensified Sherlock’s fascination in the beautiful beast that was John Watson.

He cleared his throat. “You, umm, you look good Sherlock. You look happy.”

Laughing briefly, Sherlock decided that if he was going to get to permission to speak, that was it.

“I’m here because I made the fundamental mistake of telling someone as sentimental as Mike Stamford that I was bored and, given that his intellect is often clouded by the incessant need to fix others while ignoring his own glaring character flaws, he decided that  _ bored  _ must mean  _ lonely.  _ Which would be all well and good except that when I said that I was bored, it was exactly what I meant.” Sherlock quipped and gave the doctor a tight lipped smile, disguising the pounding in his chest. “Have you honestly forgotten how miserable boredom makes me?”

“Huh...”

“What?”

“I’m just thinking that I didn’t remember you being this much of an arse or so full of shit. I suppose pretending to be dead for nearly a decade could change a man.” John leaned back in his chair with his arms crossed. He continued evaluating Sherlock as he had earlier and Sherlock could not for the life of him figure out what he was looking at him like but it certainly was not a Christmas goose.

“Why do you think Mike thought I’d be the bloke to call when he  _ mistakenly _ decided that you were lonely? He doesn’t even know we knew each other.” John said the word with disbelief and Sherlock could not hold back a scoff. His mother would have said he was being rude, but there were such occasions where rudeness was the only logical response. Sherlock found he was better at recognizing them than other people.

“Why haven’t you been invalidated from the RAMC? Clearly your injuries are severe and you have enough years under your belt to warrant a respectable military pension, yet you remain on medical leave with no deployment date but no discharge paperwork either. Why?”

“I believe it’s customary to answer someone’s question instead of asking your own.” John challenged, with a smirk.

Sherlock raised his eyebrows in surprise at the bold response and felt as if he finally had found his suitable sparring partner again after years of destroying amateurs with very little satisfaction. “Oh, that was my answer.” He was pleased that John didn’t seem angry anymore. Amused, surprised and a bit miffed underneath it all, but not angry. His crossed arms were for his own comfort, as he took a bullet to the shoulder as well. Holding his arm wasn’t comfortable so he was letting the other shoulder handle the weight. Still, not angry. Sherlock felt the full body tension that overtook him upon seeing John, fall to the floor and it left him loose and ready to play. 

John always liked his games.

He chuckled. Sherlock could not pin if he felt the response was dim witted or extraordinary. “Alright, fine. As you know, I chose my sixth form college based on their unspoken relationship with a university that had a fantastic pre med program and then my medical school specialty with the sole intent of enlisting. I’ve known for the last twenty-three years that I was going to be in the RAMC and I bloody well don’t intend on letting a couple of bullets and a ruddy cane stop me. Having a few friends higher up to drag the paperwork until I can pass a physical examination isn’t hurting the situation.” John shrugged with only one shoulder.

“Brilliant.” 

Clearly Doctor Watson remembered at least a bit of what Sherlock had taught him when it came to deducing aloud or challenging someone to deduce ones selse. It was important to explain every bit of evidence used, or available, as to leave them with no doubts or opportunities to counter. They couldn’t counter because the science of deduction failed so rarely that the small and feeble minded majority that occupied the world would have no hope to notice even the small mistakes that arose- not from the science itself failing as fact could not fail- but human error in the form of incomplete data.

“How exactly is that an answer to my question?”

“Oh, it’s not, that’s why it’s so brilliant.” Sherlock said with delight. “It is so rare that I am caught by pleasant surprise. Quite honestly, I didn’t consider that you would find it necessary to remind me that you’re a stubborn bastard, and certainly not in so many words.”

Again, John chuckled. Apparently, light hearted insults were still allowed. “I’m glad I’m appreciated. I figured that I’d be the one appreciating you this evening but I cannot muster even a shred of interest in seeing parlor tricks tonight.”

“And I can muster even less for performing them.” Sherlock felt the heavy deck of cards in his pocket lighten to their proper weight as his dread of delighting the man before him was lifted. “In any case, I would like to see if you can deduce the answer yourself.” 

The doctor sat up closer to the table, adjusting his positioning in a way that took the weight off of his aching leg. Sherlock was impressed that he didn’t flinch, and remembered how it felt when that leg was used to hold him up against a wall and kiss him until he saw stars. Somehow, those memories felt further away than primary school violin recitals and playing pirates with Mycroft by the lake.

“Alright, I’ll try almost anything once. Or, I suppose I’ll try it, again. Do you mind giving me a couple of hints?”

“I was counting on having to.” Sherlock struggled not to laugh at John pretending hadn’t obviously been deducing everyone and everything in the room since the moment he entered. Perhaps it had become natural to him. Sherlock liked that concept very much, indeed. The thought that he had such an influence on John gave him such a sudden boost he momentarily feared it was delusions of grandeur that went along with his manic episodes. Thankfully, Sherlock knew it wasn’t. It was just John. God, he still loved John. John was still so very perfectly  _ good _ .

“We are both sitting here because Mike Stamford- a happily married psychologist in veterans affairs- believes he knows us well enough to determine that we are a potential match. I have spent the last eight years as a magnificent, the highest paid in London for obvious reasons, as I’m sure you could tell from my choice of high security venue, my standard of dress and the prices of these drinks. You know plenty about yourself so I am not going to bore us both by repeating it. Tell me, why did Mike Stamford believe that you, John Watson, were the man who could sweep me off my feet? The cure to my loneliness?” 

Sherlock was beginning to wonder if Stamford was as dim as he presented himself to be. Then again, an unwound clock would be correct twice a day. Mike Stamford still hadn’t found the key to saving Vic’s life and their children had little chance of success because the only parent they had left was Sherlock himself. Sherlock knew that he was okay-ish at parenting on his best days. Until Vic died, that was all Sherlock had ever had to be. 

“I’ll give you a hint. I most certainly was  _ not  _ his patient.” Sherlock threaded his fingers together and leaned forward so his elbows were on the table and his chin was resting on his fists. Then, he winked. Sherlock could not recall the last time he had winked except that it most certainly was also at John Watson.

Instead of his jaw going slack or cursing at Sherlock while pulling his coat back on, John spoke. John did not just speak, he  _ answered.  _ It shouldn’t have been a surprise to Sherlock, as John Watson had not changed a bit. “Your late husband was military.”

Sherlock gave him an encouraging nod that left space in the air for further detail. “Vic,” He provided him with a name. 

“Vic was killed.” John said hesitantly, then reached out a friendly hand as if he expected that Sherlock needed comforting at the mere statement of fact. “Sherlock, I am so sorry.”

He ignored it, unimpressed by John’s display of compassion but amazingly less bored than he had been in months. “That isn’t the conclusion you reached,” Sherlock chided him playfully. “Be honest and don’t concern yourself with my feelings, as you very well know I haven’t any. Tell me  _ exactly _ what you’re thinking.”

John cleared his throat uncomfortably, taking back his ignored offering of a hand without any obvious indication he was offended. He was offended, of course, but Sherlock only knew this because he offended people often enough to know the signs.

“Your husband didn’t die at war, he returned and didn’t adjust well to civilian life.”

That had always been a very quaint euphemism for committing suicide and in the time since Vic’s death, Sherlock had compiled an extensive list of all those he had heard. Some were said to him, particularly at the funeral, and they were meant with kindness. Others were used when it was believed he wasn’t listening, and they were far more graphic and disdainful. It made Sherlock’s blood boil the way they implied that Vic was somehow weak. As if succumbing to horrors brought home was anything less than a soldier's death. Having said that, the phrase  _ brains painted all over the walls  _ was not an inaccurate description of events.

“Mike was his psychologist for some time before his death, I’m going to assume, and that’s how you got to know each other.”

“Two years of treatment.” He nodded once, holding up two fingers and back his final correction, as it was insignificant in the grand scheme of things. “I’ve chosen to call him a time or two since then when I’ve needed to verify data I’ve collected on human behavior.” Primarily, the human behavior of his step-step-daughter and whether or not his infant son was properly attached to him, until separation anxiety reared its ugly earful red-in-the-face head.

“Sherlock, I’m… god I’m so sorry. I know you probably hear that a lot and it probably sounds condescending coming from me but… wow.” John finally did gape but Sherlock could tell it was far more at what John believed to be his own social ineptness than the concept of a soldier committing suicide. That was hardly a surprise to anyone who had been to war, although the Royal Air Force tended to have much fewer suicide related deaths than the army. Based on the most recent data Sherlock had obtained, it tended to be one or two every year.

“You’re still so young,” John winced, “I’m going to assume Vic was as well. The pension couldn’t have been much of anything at all and spouses only receive a tiny percentage without any children- I had to look into that myself when I was considering getting married- so you started doing this to support yourself. Mike thought that, of all people, we were the only ones he knew that could handle one another.”

_ Because I know how to handle a soldier with a death wish like going back to Afghanistan with three bullet wounds for the love of adrenaline.  _ Sherlock completed John’s thought and that truth hung between them but his date appeared grateful that it went unspoken.  _ And because somehow the utterly clueless man sensed that I would be more exciting to return to than an active battlefield. _ Mike had no reason to have known that John’s love for Sherlock was- and always had been by his evaluation- far less than his love for war.

“Very close, Doctor Watson, and close in this game is impressive for someone that claims to have not played in some time. Only three corrections and they are minor, do not be discouraged.” He pulled out his wallet under the table as well as the photograph he kept tucked in the cash compartment. 

“First, I do what I do because it pays well and keeps me free to pursue my other interests and obligations. There are any number of laboratories in London that would hire me, as I did finish both my undergraduate and masters in chemistry, however I can’t justify the time commitment.” Sherlock chose not to mention exactly why he needed to generate more than the average Londoner’s annual income every month.

“Second, Vic was several years older than myself, making my age less relevant in regards to years of service, and we have a son. I am also raising my  _ step _ -step-daughter.

“Third and finally, Vic was short for Victoria.” He smirked and slid the photograph of a honey haired woman in a tea length blush dress holding a bouquet. He had taken it outside the building after Mycroft had performed a short civil ceremony.

John picked up the photograph and smiled sadly. “She was beautiful, Sherlock.” There was no jealousy in his words and plenty of moderately well disguised surprise at the concept of him with a woman. In John’s defense, Sherlock was just as perplexed by the memories as he was.

“I like to think so.” He accepted the small picture when it was handed back, but felt tempted to keep it out to slip into John’s coat pocket before he departed. For all John knew, he didn’t have another copy and would call looking to return it, and Sherlock certainly wanted to see John Watson again.

“I was a happy man for a time, much longer than I thought I would be at any rate and I’m fortunate that I experienced it at all. Most are never so lucky.” And Sherlock had gotten to feel that way twice. It was twice more often than he likely deserved. 

“What’s your boy’s name? How old is he?” John asked.

Sherlock counted back, and was tempted to text Mrs Hudson to confirm his calculation. It was not that he had deleted it, as Sherlock liked to think of writing dates on his calendar as storing them externally. “Hamish is twenty-nine months, one week and four days. He likes trains.”

“You’re kidding? Hamish is my middle name.” John said, allowing his wonder at the coincidence to melt away the tension brought about from talk of war, death and orphans. He laughed in that particular John Watson way that Sherlock adored but had seen so little of because, due to Sherlock’s erratic behavior, John had spent much more of their time together yelling than doing much else. 

Sherlock looked down for a moment, a little ashamed, and nodded back up with only the ghost tears in his eyes that even John wouldn’t see. “I know it is, John.”

“Why would you do that? I don’t understand.”

“Yes, you do.” 

“Maybe, probably, it's just that I thought you- where is Hamish tonight? I can’t imagine it’s easy for a single parent to slip away like this.” 

“We’re still in that flat on Baker’s street,”  _ Our flat.  _ “Vic was actually Mrs Hudson’s niece so no need to be concerned, Hamish is well looked after and adequately adored.” Sherlock was glad he didn’t carry a hard copy of his son’s photograph, as he was changing every day. Give it a week or so and whatever print wouldn’t look like the same child. At least, he didn’t look the same to him. The unobservant would likely offer a differing opinion. “Would you like to see it?”

“Like to see what?”

“My flat.”  _ Our old flat.  _

“Right now?”

“You may finish your drink first, of course. They’ve got my card on file here for obvious reasons.” Sherlock stood up as John knocked back the remainder of his last drink. “Oh, and John, don’t worry yourself with being seen leaving with me. I have chosen this location for its discretion and easily accessible alternate exits. There should be a car waiting. I made it widely known that I detest blind dates.”

John stood and put his arms through his own coat then zipped it up the front. “What are you talking about?” He followed Sherlock behind the bar and dishwashing station, towards the alley way, whispering adorable apologies to the staff as they cut off their paths.

“You’re leaving a dark cocktail lounge with a prostitute. What would your sister say?”

There was a laugh from beside him as they emerged from the dark alley to a major road and Sherlock easily hailed a black car with darkly tinted windows that was most certainly not a cab. 

“She’d probably say something about how insufferable I’ve been these last few months.” He slid in beside Sherlock, choosing the middle seat that left their thighs touching, and the detective relished in the man not afraid to touch him out of fear he would be charged for it. “Then tell me that it’s about time I did something to get myself laid.”

Sherlock smirked in response. “Oh, that’s a bit optimistic, wouldn’t you say?”

“Maybe.” John chuckled and looked around the car. Sherlock watched his hands graze over the plush leather seats and stretched out his knees to take full advantage of the legroom. “Do you always have a personal driver?”

“Unfortunately, this is far closer to a police escort.” He reached under the seat and found the kit that Mycroft always left him. It typically included cold water, paracetamol, condoms, preventative antibiotics, and, humorously, a few packages of snack cakes.

Catching a look out of the corner of his eye, Sherlock noticed how pale and rigid he had grown. His hands gripped hard into the fabric by his thighs. John was clearly upset, worried and tense by the looks of it, and it didn’t take long for Sherlock to trace back the conversation to determine why.

“Oh,” The detective handed the army doctor a bottle of water and one of the overly processed desserts. “Drink this and eat this. You’re not being arrested. As you may recall, my older brother is nothing if not traditional. Mycroft is disapproving of my chosen profession and has convinced himself that I’m sucking cock for drug money.” That, of course, was  _ not  _ his reason but Mycroft had no interest in hearing the real one and Sherlock was even less inclined to offer it.

He took his own bottle of water and twisted off the cap, using a bit of it to swish the sourness out of his mouth and spit it into the cup holder.

“Sucking co- who are you?”

“I’m who I told you I was in the beginning, John.” Sherlock swallowed hard against the guilt that threatened to rise from a dead place inside of him. A place that was wounded the last time he lost John. A place that died when Vic ended her life before his very eyes. “That’s all I’ve ever been.” 

“I thought you were joking. Sherlock, a magnificent is- well I can handle that. It’s an art. Just a performance and a conversation, right?” John sputtered and nervously twisted the cap back onto his water bottle to prevent it from sloshing onto the carpets. The roads were smooth between the lounge and the flat and Sherlock knew that John was aware of that. It was not the pavement, but his own shaking hands, that he feared. “Are you a sex worker? Are you doing it for drugs?”

The detective pursed his lips and forced himself to look into the blue eyes that had locked with his own so many years ago. The friend very quickly turned lover- who had taken his virginity, before taking Sherlock’s pride and hope, and had fallen for a simple illusion cooked up by a strung out smackhead because he was obviously looking for any possible way to get away from the chaos that was living with Sherlock- stared back at him. The concern on John’s face was surprisingly genuine and Sherlock knew so because concern was what people tended to feel for him the most after disdain and slightly drunken admiration.

“I’m fine, John.” He answered, and hoped the statement was heard as the truth rather than what John obviously wanted to hear. As  _ ‘do not pity me’  _ and  _ ‘please don’t leave again.’ _

“Of course you are. I shouldn’t have doubted that.” The army doctor answered and laid a hand on his knee. “But that’s not what I asked.”

“Doubted it?” 

“Sherlock, I thought you were dead.” John said, sighing and putting his head on his hands. “When I didn’t hear from you during my deployment and when I came back to see the flat was empty and a bloody  _ For Rent  _ sign out front with boxes of your things in the skip- well you can’t bloody blame me for coming to that conclusion. I knew your brother wouldn’t allow it to be entered into the public record or put out an obituary. I knew your family used a private cemetery. Every time I called Mycroft’s phone it wasn’t in service but I still called every day for a bloody year because I wanted to know what the hell happened to the man I love so far be it to me to be concerned that you’re apparently some type of illegal entertainer and prostitute so you can pay for your drug habit!”

_ Love? _ Clearly a slip of the tongue that implied the improper tense. It had been ten years since they had occupied the same room, for god's sake. Even the emotionally connected and complex being that John Wastson was could not possibly develop love for someone only after leaving them. 

John’s true love was war. It always had been and clearly still was if he was under the delusion that he would ever be allowed to return to the RAMC.

_ Loved _ was the only possible option, if that had ever been true at all, because it certainly had ended during John’s deployment. Sherlock couldn’t blame him or muster any hurt or anger about it. If he was being honest with himself, he was even slightly flattered. John was being very convincing. Sherlock would not have had to have been convincing if it was him using a word as loaded as  _ love _ because it would not be a lie. Not in regards to John. Or Vic, Molly and Hamish. Even Mrs Hudson and Mycroft and Gregory. Those were the people he, of course, would always love.

Maybe he should have said that. It probably would have been the right thing to say if Sherlock was the type of person who said the right thing. Instead, he looked away and picked at the invisible dirt under his finger tails. “I don’t have a drug habit.”

Those were the last words either of them said until the car pulled up to 221B Bakers Street and they met on the sidewalk. Much to his surprise, John did not yell at him. Instead, John offered him his hand and this time, Sherlock took it. 

God almighty, he would be so glad he did. 


	5. Nothing At All

_ Only in retrospect would John Watson notice how unnatural it was to grow accustomed to screaming until his saliva became foam along the sides of his tongue. Yelling at the person he loved as if he himself were a rabid animal trying to chase away a trespasser was far from John’s proudest moment. Unfortunately, it was only one in a series of moments instead of a single indiscretion that he would later apologize for. By the time it occurred to John the severity of his transgression, that it required apology at all, it was far too late. _ _   
_ __ _ Sherlock kicked at his shin and tried to pull away as John hauled him to the other side of the kitchen, letting the boy drag his sock clad heels across the linoleum.  _

_ “What are you doing? Let me go...” His words turned to a whine that John had long since learned to ignore. _

_ He huffed and with one final push, shoved him up against the counter top. “Jesus Christ, Sherlock! What were you thinking? Huh? Wait you  _ **_weren’t_ ** _ thinking!” He snapped, pulling the younger man’s hand and upper under the stream of cold water and fighting him to keep them there when he started to shiver. “Oh, you’re cold? This is nothing. You have four ice packs with your name on them unless you want this to blister. Do you want this to blister, Sherlock? You’ll be lucky if this doesn’t scar permanently. Burns this deep can cause scars that restrict range of motion. That means no more chemistry and no more violin. Ten seconds more and you might have needed skin grafts.” _

_ Sherlock stomped his foot, his neck craning away from the sink and towards his now trashed experiment, as most of the glassware he had been using was now shattered at the bottom of the sink. “You ruined my experiment! And my chemistry set…” _

_ “Well you ruined your epidermis, so I say we’re even. Most of your dermis as well. I really hope you're proud of yourself.” John said through clenched teeth while silently hoping that the landlady wasn’t going to come upstairs to see what was causing all the commotion. It wouldn’t look great that he was using his hip to pin the younger and weaker man to the edge of the counter even if he was immobilizing him for a noble cause, his safety. _

_ “Jooooohnnnn…” Sherlock continued to plead, and he could hear the tears catching in his lover’s throat. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.” _

_ John took a deep breath and nodded his head against Sherlock’s shoulder, hoping it was a comfort to him when he couldn’t card his fingers through those dark curls. “I know, love. Let's get you dried off and try some burn cream before we resort to the ice, yeah?” He spoke as if dealing with a small child, and it tended to do the trick when Sherlock was in the throws of one of his many fits. It didn’t help that the boy hadn’t slept in days. _

_ It was that simple truth that kept John from being able to leave Sherlock for his obnoxious outbursts and displays of irresponsibility. He was just that, a  _ **_boy_ ** _ not yet sure how to actually play the part of the man his birth date declared he was. John would have felt guilty for holding him back, if he wasn’t sure that he was the only reason Sherlock had survived living on his own. _

_ “Here, does that feel any better?” John asked quietly as he was smoothing the cooling cream in a thick layer over the worst of it, which tapered off just beyond the edges of the reddened skin. _

_ Sherlock sniffled and wiped his nose on the back of the arm that John had already soothed and dressed with gauze. “Yes, I’m sorry.” _

_ “I know, love.” He said again, not minding repeating the reassurances that Sherlock clearly needed to hear. _

_ Rocking back and forth in the chair with anxiety- and soon paranoia that was often caused by his sleepless nights- Sherlock offered John a small forced smile. “Can I make it up to you?” _

_ John’s face fell. “No,” He worked with more purpose, taking too long to measure perfect sections of tape and cut the gauze to the exact size and shape required. Not this again. John wouldn't fall for it like he had when he was naive to the ways Sherlock tried to dig under his skin. “You may not.” _

_ “Can I say thank you?” The boy pressed, his free hand reaching out to toy with the collar of John’s jumper and caress the side of his neck in the slightly tickle like way he knew the army doctor loved. “I’m  _ **_very_ ** _ good at thank-yous. Almost as good as you are at taking care of me.” _

_ He took a deep breath, the knowledge that Sherlock wasn’t in his right mind enough to prevent his words from provoking anything resembling desire. “Do you know how I want you to say thank you?” _

_ Sherlock perked up, his tongue licking his lips to wet them and tease John with a taste of the little grin he gave before wrapping his mouth around John’s cock. “Probably.” He nearly sang. _

_ “Fine, then tell me how.” John sighed and started packing up his kit, noting the supplies he soon would have to replace and what they would survive without for the time being. _

_ “Well first, you’d want to tie me to the headboard-“ _

_ John slammed his fist down on the table, trying to control the breaths that wished to turn to screams of anger and frustration. “No, Sherlock. I asked what I wanted  _ **_you_ ** _ to do to say thank you. That isn’t what you would do. What do I want YOU to do? Tell me,  _ **_now_ ** _ , if you think you’re so bloody smart!” _

_ Looking frightened and small, Sherlock visibly swallowed and went back to fidgeting. “I don’t know, John…” _

_ “Of course you don’t. Why did I ever think you were capable of thinking about anyone but yourself? All I do is set myself up for inevitable disappointment.” He finally latched the kit and pushed back in his chair, going to the locked medicine safe and pulling out several pills. “What I want, Sherlock, is for you to take your medication. That is how you can thank me. Will you do that? Please… if not for yourself, for me?” _

_ A small nod was all he received, Sherlock’s downcast eyes flooding with tears that ran steadily down his cheeks. But John couldn't comfort or coddle him until Sherlock did what he asked. Any mercy, any affection, would be akin to John apologizing and telling Sherlock he could do no wrong. _

_ No. _

_ Not this time. _

_ He placed a small glass of water and a handful of pills in front of Sherlock and began to make him a bowl of the ridiculously sugary cereal that John only purchased to entice Sherlock to eat during his episodes. Quickly, Sherlock started eating the cereal and John watched on, unable to keep his anger brewing any longer. It was John’s own fault, wasn’t it? He was the one that fell in love with a broken genius, and his good intentions would never take away Sherlock’s pain. All he would ever be able to do was fight to keep both their heads above water, and it seemed as if failure was inevitable. That day was just one of many and John had never felt so tired. _

_ Only a little while later, Sherlock swallowed the pills that he offered him and agreed to lay down in their bed as long as John laid down with him. John should have said no, forced Sherlock to go to bed and stepped outside to call Mycroft, but John couldn’t bring himself to do so. With his head on John’s chest and his soft warm breath on his neck, he could be sure that Sherlock was still real. That he was still breathing. That he wasn’t a ghost that would eventually turn to mist and dissipate in the air around him. _

_ Who would have guessed that the love of his life would be the most impossible life he would ever try to save? _

* * *

If anyone was an expert in Sherlock Holmes, it was John Watson. That was why he knew the moment he saw him that they were both in over their heads.

As he sipped his brandy, John looked at the hands that thrummed against the sweating glass holding a gin and tonic. They were dry and, if wet, the lines of small cracks in the skin would spiderweb out from the spot just between his ring and middle fingers across the backs of his hands far more prominently on his right than his left. Sherlock was washing them too often and it was not because they were actually dirty. No, they only  _ felt  _ dirty. Like there were bugs across his skin if he touched anything but a smooth dry surface with no tug or pull against his flesh. It screamed of living in near constant sensory overload. It screamed of trouble.

In the car, he saw the way his collarbones jutted out, preventing his shirt from laying properly, and that the shoulders of his jacket were slightly too wide. If it was a suit off the rack, John wouldn’t have batted an eye at the small difference and assumed he was simply between sizes, but a Holmes would  _ never  _ wear a suit that wasn’t bespoke and that cost less than John had ever paid in rent. Sherlock had lost weight and not purchased new clothing. Either there was no money, no will to do so or he genuinely hadn’t noticed. John would have bet his gun on the third option, and it was the one he most feared.

Dark circles under his eyes, hidden in the low lighting and with a well blended smidge of concealer, indicated more than a few sleepless nights. Two parts battled for dominance in his slightly overgrown hair were evidence that he spent far too much time anxiously running his fingers through it. His lips were chapped but a thin layer of balm had been applied, evidence of both dehydration and a lack of care for his health as long as he appeared to be doing well. John suspected the ice in his cocktails- the two he had while waiting for John- were the only traces of water he had consumed all day.

Yes, John Watson was, again, out of his depths. And still, he resolved that he would again try to save Sherlock Holmes from himself. God knew he had failed the last time.

Upon entering 221B, John first believed that nothing had been changed. The hallway steps still needed to be painted, refinished, or carpeted quite badly. The door at the top was still left open as casually as it always was, and all but three of the walls still bore the same ghastly floral pattern, while the other was painted a sage green.

“You got rid of wallpaper.” John pointed towards the new paint with a smile. He believed the home makeover shows on the telly in the VA waiting room had called the concept an accent wall.“I like it.”

Sherlock glanced up from where he had begun typing on an expensive looking mobile phone. “It was a closed casket. Tea.” He said, only a short pause between statements that both sounded like he was telling him the time or where to find the loo.

The tightness in John’s throat kept him from speaking, which was fortunately not necessary, as Sherlock immediately headed to the kitchen and waved towards the two chairs that faced one another. He sat down, unsure if it was out of obedience or avoidance. His jumper was soon suffocating him and he pulled it off, revealing the slightly yellowing white button down that he wore underneath. Out of habit, he folded and rolled the material until it could be easily tucked next to him on the chair. 

Above the mantel was a shadow box containing a folded Union flag with a plaque underneath that he couldn’t read and didn’t need to. He knew what it said. To its left was a glass jar with a twist on lid that contained twenty one tarnished bullet casings. Instead of a lone skull and several knives, the rest of the ledge was covered with precariously balanced and sometimes overlapping framed photographs of the same blonde haired woman that Sherlock had shown him earlier.  _ Victoria. _

Holding her multi-shades-of-pink bouquet in the air with triumph as Sherlock dipped her, their lips locked like magnets. No, like puzzle pieces.

Resting her hands on a large bump, Sherlock reaching from behind to do the same. The train of her pink gown trailed off to the side of the photograph as to not be stepped on.

With a bundle of blue blankets in a hospital bed, beaming with a smile that could rival the sun and a vase of pink flowers in the background.

Posed with a young girl, a small baby and Sherlock, her  _ husband _ , on what appeared to be Christmas. Even the meticulous detective was wearing a forest green suit and a pair of cartoon-ish reindeer antlers along with the widest smile John had ever seen. The snowflakes on Victoria’s sweater were pink. 

As a child, a halo of gold curls frizzing out and catching the light as she stood in a kiddie pool wearing a pink swimsuit.

So happy. So complete. So surrounded by love. And ever so pink.

The Sherlock Holmes that he had known detested the color, calling it frivolous and childish. Nothing but an assault to the senses and his impressive intellect. Now, John imagined it was his favorite.

His eyes couldn’t resist returning to the wood and glass encased flag, and John felt for a moment as if he was going to be sick. He would have to have been a daft prick not to understand what having and displaying that flag meant. 

Sherlock had been given that flag. Sherlock had watched his wife suffer, and gone to her funeral after she shot herself in the very sitting room where they were to have tea. Sherlock, the eighteen year old kid who had asked with a tear in his eye if his first time was going to hurt- which John would have  _ never  _ allowed to happen- and if John was mad at him every time he was in even the slightest bit of a sour mood, had lived through the agony of twenty-one blanks being fired into the air in the same hour that his wife’s body had been lowered into the ground. He had done it with his children in tow and created a shrine to his beloved that he felt no shame in leaving out for his date to see. 

It seemed that the love of John’s life had found, and lost, the love of his own. 

“What is with people and their need to pity me?” Sherlock snapped, slamming down a tea tray on the coffee table, and taking his seat with a look that implied much less fury that his voice had. He raked his hands through his hair and John remembered petting and pulling those curls when they belonged to a teenage boy that was terrified of being gay and thrilled by the prospect of being nothing at all. 

Sherlock smirked, clearly having noticed John’s gaze. “Yes, well, you should know I’m fine. It’s not as if it's the first time I’ve lost a soldier.” He laughed humorlessly and shook his head.

John tried to think of what to say that wasn’t an apology that Sherlock obviously didn’t want to hear or an awkward joke that he tended to make for his own benefit. He landed on the truth. “I think we both have some explaining to do.” 

Sherlock tilted his head for a second, thinking it over, and then straightened himself to nod. “Yes, that is certainly a fair conclusion to draw. Is this the part where I apologize or where you lecture me about  _ why  _ I should apologize?”

While John had anticipated a bit of classic Sherlock snark, the words still grated against wounds. Against gunshot scars. Against the raw skin of the cheeks he had started biting as a compulsive habit resurrected from childhood and  _ not  _ PTSD the way that Harry and Stamford had suggested. That did not, however, make the grating words any less true. John had spent a good portion of his time home during the nearly two years they lived together at 221B as the voice of reason for an overgrown child with bipolar disorder that he insisted he could self medicate with street drugs far better than anything found at the chemist. 

And he had yelled at that boy, a lot.

“Neither. I’m not angry with you anymore.” Any grudge John had held for Sherlock’s sudden departure from his life had melted away in one conversation over too many drinks in that dimly lit cocktail lounge.“I am sorry, though. I shouldn’t have left without resolving our petty arguments over melted countertops and all that rubbish.”

The long beautiful fingers of his date scraped across his forearms, and John recognized what that meant in terms of which of the many vices of Sherlock Holmes left him itching for relief. Given that Sherlock was prone to lying, this did not surprise him.

“The arguments were about me not taking my prescribed medications and being addicted to cocaine, John, and having stayed up three nights straight working on an experiment until I was so exhausted that I  _ then  _ melted the counter top and gave myself second degree burns. You were not being-” Sherlock stopped and cleared his throat. “Your reaction was not unreasonable.”

John remembered that, but had hardly thought it to be a significant part of the memory. Sherlock had been sick. He had been  _ very  _ sick in ways that were not his fault and John had selfishly allowed to go without proper treatment in favor of holding onto him just a while longer. As far as John was concerned, there was no excuse for throwing half of Sherlock’s glassware into the sink so hard that it shattered or for carrying on about his irresponsibility and cluelessness until he cried. “I’m sorry. I think I’d tried to forget that day.”

“Likewise.”

“You’re better now, right? Squared away with your medications?”

He nodded. “As much as anyone with my condition can be.”

“No more episodes or anything?” John asked and tried to put a friendly GP smile on his face as if he was asking about minor symptoms during an annual physical. Truthfully, he was unsure if he could go through that again.

Who was John trying to kid? This was Sherlock, of all people. For him, he could handle anything. He’d certainly done it all before.

Sherlock rolled his eyes but there was a small smile on his lips. Clearly, it was a question that Sherlock had been asked too many times for it to still be offensive. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and his fingers threaded together. “John, fluctuating moods are a part of my life. Manic, mixed and depressive episodes are something that I do and will always need to keep watch for. The last notable event was five months ago. Thankfully, I saw it coming, had my medication adjusted to prevent things from worsening and took something in the interim to allow me to function. A bit catatonically, I’ll admit, but I did what the children needed and went to work all day and handled my client appointments in the evening. Those times are hard, as is the nature of the disorder. I need you, very much, to understand that. Do you?”

_ Do I? Not, can I?  _ John is surprised by the confession and explanation not ending in a thinly veiled insult to his intelligence. Sherlock was leaving it to him as to whether or not he chooses to be understanding and empathetic. Either way, he couldn’t lie. Not to Sherlock Holmes.

“All I ever wanted was for you to be happy and able to put your illness behind you. I don’t understand the reason you still have to suffer, but I’d really like it if you let me hang around long enough to find out.”

“I believe that could be arranged. You have always been important to me, John.” He huffed a laugh. “You cannot imagine the type of humiliation I had to subject myself to to get Mycroft to hand over a copy of his annual report on you.”

_ More humiliation than shagging blokes for money?  _ John kicked himself as soon as he thought it. It wasn’t fair. Maybe it was a valid question, but certainly not a very kind one.

“Why would he compile an annual report on me?”

Sherlock sipped his tea, having leaned back more at ease than before. “I asked him to make sure that you were alright. He agreed to do so very easily, I suspect he was already doing it, but would only show me the file if I wore the ghastly jumper my mother knits for me every Christmas for the entirety of Boxing Day. A high price that I willingly paid.”

“I suppose I must have been important for you to do that. Not to mention you naming your son after me. Why Hamish, though?” John wondered.

He smiled again, and John wondered if he had seen as many genuine expressions of contentment in the entirety of their relationship than he had in that single evening. “If I had named him John, then it could have reminded me of so many people. Hamish, on the other hand, has only ever reminded me of you.”


	6. The Boy He Ruined

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a short one, but it has to be posted to get a move on hahaha. Enjoy!

Always an early riser, John woke at six in the morning to the all too familiar sensation of smooth skin under his own, and opened his eyes to the ethereal image of one Sherlock Holmes. Extracting himself was painful, and not just because of his shoulder that screamed without the anti-inflammatory medications he had stupidly left at his bedsit the evening before. Being able to see, smell, taste and touch the boy - no, the _man_ \- he spent a decade pining after and mourning was nothing short of a bloody miracle and hardly one that John Watson believed he deserved.

He made his way to the medicine cabinet above the bathroom sink and was pleased to find a bottle of surprisingly _not_ -expired paracetamol within easy reach. Washing down two pills with water from the tap, John helped himself to a luxuriously long hot shower in a bathroom without four suspicious kinds of mold growing on the ceiling. Even putting on his clothes from the night before was not too terrible of a prospect given that he’d dressed shortly before their date, so they didn’t have more than six hours of wear out of them. It had been nowhere near midnight when he and Sherlock had decided their conversation was one that required whiskey, not tea, and soon after found themselves tumbling into bed. What a night it had been…  
Reminiscing fondly, John was caught by surprise when he took the time to truly look at the man sprawled out in what had, at one time, been his bed. While Sherlock was made up of miles of flawless alabaster skin like freshly fallen snow, his forearms were more akin to a battlefield that still bore marks of all that was lost there. The track marks littered from the crooks of his elbows to just above his wrists were unsurprising, nor were the several dozen spots from the irritation that only came at the point of a needle. All in all, drugs were responsible for the smallest and least attention grabbing marks across his skin. No, the criminal that Sherlock owed thanks to was not his dealer or even himself, but John. 

Sherlock’s palms scarred by broken glass,

Nearly his entire forearm burnt with acid, 

Memories past of self harm and suicide attempts that left rippled skin,

A tattoo of his first lover’s name that had bled with age that hadn't exactly been Sherlock's idea,

Even the blooming bruises from where John had held him to the mattress the night before in the throes of their drunken ecstasy, were all the doctor’s fault. If anyone was responsible for the destruction of Sherlock Holmes, it was John Watson.

He was seated in his old chair, thrumming his fingers against the arm of it with one hand and holding his still too hot tea with the other, when twelve-fifteen rolled around. It seemed the moment the soft quarter hour chime ended, the familiar sound of the door downstairs being unlocked brought John’s attention back to the present. By the sound of light rapid footsteps, the nearly two hundred year old stairs were being taken far too quickly and it was then that John remembered Sherlock telling him that his _step-_ step-daughter wasn’t likely to be home until after three before he stumbled into the shower minutes before after a particularly long lie in, even by Holmesian standards.

The last ten years of deployments to the Middle East had left John with the unique opportunity to note the ways the western world changed every time he returned to it. An unfortunate pattern, he had noted, was the way children were nearly being discouraged from behaving as such. Gone were the days of t-shirts for horrible bands, lip smackers being sold everywhere tween girls could be found and hours of nervously staring at the phone to work up the nerve to call a girl or boy they fancied and ask if they wished to meet at the cinema. Without intending on sounding like a terribly old man, John had told several of his mates that he thought the existence of mobile phones glued to the hands of every child above ten was the cause of this sad loss. Instead of the brightly colored teen magazines along the queue at the market, the boys and girls were modeling their fashion sense after photographs that adult celebrities posted on their social media accounts. It had gotten to the point where John theorized that if he was shown photographs of the closets of a mother, daughter, father and son, he would be unable to determine which belonged to the parents and which were the children’s.

So when John Watson had heard that Sherlock had a fourteen-year-old _step_ -step-daughter, he had nearly unconsciously braced himself to keep his old, more conservative and unwanted opinions on _today’s youth_ to himself. What he had not anticipated was that those opinions would not apply, but perhaps he should have. Perhaps he should have seen it coming like a freight train that a child raised by Sherlock managed to startle him the same way Sherlock’s erratic behavior always had, but he had not been that prudent.

When Molly rounded the corner towards John into the sitting room, neither of them said a word. The teenage girl froze, her hands having slightly lifted the strap of her messenger bag as if to pull it over her head and drop it in a heap onto the floor. John’s tea was tilted towards his lips and nearly at the edge of the mug, but the sip went uncompleted. Instead, they both stared at one another. And stared, and stared, and stared… until finally, the brown haired girl with soaking wet hair- despite it being a rare day of clear skies in London- in a slightly oversized fitting uniform, that was charred in four places but dripping onto the wood floors, started to scream.

Her first yelp was ear splitting and John scalded himself with his tea before rushing to sit down the cup and dab at his jumper with the crumpled paper napkin he found on the end table.

“Sherlock?!” Molly finally lifted the bag over her head, only to dump the contents on the floor between John and the entrance to the kitchen, and then scurried down it. “Sherlock, please help me! There is a man going to kidnap me!” She pounded her fist on the locked bathroom door. John could hear the water cut off and the metal rings scrape against the shower curtain rod as it was yanked open. The young girl continued to hit the door rapidly, giving John panicked glances over her shoulder, until finally the knob turned and the door opened.

“Shhh, hey now.” Sherlock grabbed the girl’s wrist before she managed to punch him and pulled her to his chest, rubbing circles on her upper back with one hand and using the other to ensure the front of his closed dressing gown stayed that way. “There is no one here to hurt you. Take some steady breaths and calm yourself.”

John locked eyes with Sherlock, who shook his head without anger or even disapproval. In fact, he appeared just as apologetic as he felt, and he mouthed a couple of words that John would not have been able to make out without the very specific circumstances in which they were being said.

_“She’s like this, it’s not you.”_

In response, John nodded with the slight wave gesture that universally translated to _‘totally fine’_ and gave him a tight lipped smile.

“That’s enough, Molly. You’re not going anywhere with anyone. Everything is just fine.” Sherlock spoke only slightly firmer, and the girl obviously mumbled something too low to be heard from as far away as John was. “John Watson is an old friend of mine. No one is angry with you, Molls. I’ll likely be getting a phone call before the end of day but these things can’t be helped. They just happen. Why don’t you get some fresh clothes and go use Mrs Hudson’s bathtub? A long condition will help with the burnt hair smell. Though I may still have to give you a haircut...” He wrinkled his nose and tried to let go of the girl, who took at least a minute to break away before running out of the sitting room and up the stairs without looking up from her shoes.

John picked up his tea again, took a sip and then stood to help when he realized that Sherlock had crouched down to pick up the pile of sticker covered folders, colorful glitter pens and heavy university level textbooks that had littered the floor.

“I should get that,” He said, kneeling down painfully to help gather the excessive amount of girlish clutter- the type he had believed to be extinct only five minute prior- that had to go back into a leather messenger bag which suddenly seemed far too small to hold it. “It’s my fault she dumped it out in the first place.” Sherlock accepted his assistance, stood and helped John back to his feet. The bag went on a hook that had clearly been pulled out of the wall in several poorly patched places before being secured crookedly to a stud.

“Not entirely,” He grumbled with only mild irritation. “She wasn’t afraid of you, exactly.”

“Then what was wrong?”

Sherlock dragged him behind by his hand towards the bedroom and closed the door behind them, then untied his dressing gown and dropped it to the floor. “It seems Molly decided that she was going to work on an independent experiment in the chemistry lab during a study period and there was a bit of an incident.” He explained and quickly dressed himself in trousers and a white button up shirt. “They sent her home early to cool off but she saw you and thought they had sent someone to take her away.”

“Away from where?”

“Me, of course.” He grabbed his phone off the nightstand and unlocked it, cursing under his breath. “I knew I should have taken it in the shower with me. Those little lunatics seem to make a sport out of needing me the most when I’m unavailable. Eight bloody text messages and two phone calls in the span of ten minutes.”

 _Little lunatics?_ Had Sherlock been insulting his children as a term of endearment to their faces? And if so, did he at all understand the damage that he could be inflicting on Molly’s psyche by doing so? Then again, John wasn’t exactly the spokesman for not fucking up children. That’s all Sherlock had been, after all. An overgrown child.

“Will she forgive you?” John asked.

Sherlock looked up at him, away from the phone on which he was still typing. “Molly isn’t the type to hold a grudge. A bubble bath and a bit of Mrs Hudson’s fussing will do her a world of good.”

“Is she particularly-“ _dramatic?_ John thought that was probably not a polite question. “-sensitive?” Once it left his lips, he was unsure if that was the better choice. The girl had lost both of her parents and her step-mother had committed suicide in their living room. It was fortunate she wasn’t a nervous wreck.

Finally, Sherlock sent his message and tucked his mobile into his front trouser pocket. “Clearly. If I’ve told that girl once then I’ve told her a thousand times, explosions just _happen_ sometimes and fussing over it won’t change a thing.” 

***

“We should talk about last night.” John said, scratching the back of his neck when they finally made their way into the kitchen. “When was the last time that you were- I’m sure you understand my concerns about it since you’re a _sex worker_.” If he needed a preventative antibiotic, time was of the essence.

Sherlock laughed humorlessly out of his nose and started the kettle over the stove, noticing John’s suddenly confused expression. “I use the electric kettle for my experiments and this one for tea, so I hope you microwaved your last two cups, though it is truly a sin to do so. As far as being tested for sexually transmitted infections, you need not be concerned. I’ve always used condoms in my work and personal life, other than with Victoria. I have also been tested every two weeks for years, mostly to keep Mycroft from breathing particles of cake down my neck. I have had no reason to suspect any fluid transfer has occurred.”

“That’s good.” He said, relief washing over him. They hadn’t used a condom that night but at least there was no risk for a gay man to get a hook up pregnant. Unless, of course, that man was Sherlock Holmes. In which case, that gay man would marry a blonde woman named Victoria he met as a client, have a baby, then raise her children when she took her own life and become a prostitute to support them and a drug habit he insisted he didn’t have.  
When they first met, it had seemed like Sherlock was one of the few young men on the spectrum of sexual identity that was fully and distinctly gay. Then again, the Sherlock that stood before him was not the barely eighteen year old boy he caught breaking into a lab at the medical college when he himself was borrowing it for a project. This was not a boy, but a man. A man that John very much wanted to know. A man that intrigued him just as much as he made John desperately uneasy.

A cup of tea was placed in front of him, two sugars and no milk, and John smiled. “You remembered the way I take it.” John had drank his tea the night before without thinking anything of it. It simply tasted like tea at 221B Baker’s Street was supposed to taste. Absolutely perfect.

Sherlock sipped from his own cup, black instead of half milk as John had always prepared for him. “There are things one’s hands remember that their conscious mind does not.” This was undeniably true, as John had somehow recalled the precise technique to play Sherlock’s body like John hoped he still played his violin. “You hate your bedsit.” Sherlock said. 

“How do you know that?”

He smirked. “You’re Captain John Hamish Watson, and it’s a bloody bed sit.”

John felt a small amount of tea pushed up into his sinuses as he held back a laugh but he ignored the burn and urge to cough. “Alright, fair. Sometimes I would rather have a bed in the psych ward.”

“I thought so.” Sherlock smiled with triumph. “Now all we must do is determine how we may go about remedying the situation.”

“Burn it to the ground?” John suggested jokingly, but he certainly could imagine the scratchy fabrics and finish-less floorboards very easily going up in flames. They may not even require an accelerant.

“Of course not, don’t be an idiot.” Sherlock snipped. “You’ll simply have to move back here. Clearly you still find the mattress comfortable. You haven’t been limping all morning, even with your shoulder smiting you as it was when you woke.”

“What?” John looked down at his leg that- while it did hurt- was not necessarily restricted in its range of motion. “Why would it be… I can’t just move in, Sherlock.”

“Why not? You don’t own much, most of your things are still here and you were always a minimalist. A couple of boxes shouldn’t be that hard to move this afternoon.” Sherlock shrugged, clearly dismissing the notion that moving into an ex-boyfriend’s flat after seeing one another again - after ten years of estrangement - just the day before was outrageous. 

“What I meant was that it’s not appropriate for us to just hook up after a blind date and suddenly I’m moving into the flat you share with your _children_. God, Sherlock, think about Molly. I terrify her.”

“I _am_ thinking about Molly,” Sherlock’s silvery eyes actually appeared to darken as they narrowed with offense, as if John had insulted Molly herself instead of just frightening her by his very presence. “I think of her and Hamish in everything that I do. Besides, this was _your_ flat and we always had great sex. I fail to see the problem.”

John knew the proposal was utterly ridiculous, of course it was, but it was well under the acceptable threshold of ridiculousness that he had always expected from his younger lover. It was odd that his tolerance for Sherlockian shenanigans had not lowered with time or distance, even taking into account that Sherlock was a lost figment of his past for a very _very_ long time. Every convincing word that John would have rathered to think he was above falling for still slithered under his skin and transfixed itself between every vertebrae.

The sensation was absolutely divine.

Then, there was the unfortunate and still vaguely unreal fact that Sherlock had gotten himself involved in a dangerous profession. John couldn’t help but believe that, all likelihood, his lingering naivety had led him to be roped into a career as a magnificent- a type of entertainer looked down upon by polite society but in his opinion a respectable profession when the entertainers were kept safe- and found himself pushed into a life of prostitution. The sensitive, sweet boy he’d known wasn’t the type to live such a life unaffected by false affections and the cruelty that was in all likelihood spat at him every step of the way. If John Watson was experienced in anything, it was saving Sherlock Holmes from himself. Especially after he was the one who put him in danger by walking away so bloody easily.

“Alright, fine.” He decided, and nodded to himself as if to make his decision settle down into permanence. “I’ll go get my things.”

A bright smile, one that John felt to his core as his arms raised into goosebumps, spread across Sherlock’s face. “Brilliant. Absolutely, brilliant. John Watson, you…” He stopped and smiled again. “You are one of a kind.”

It didn’t take long to fetch his things and contact his landlord to inform him that he was canceling his lease. The rent was week-to-week so he was only going to have to pay a couple hundred quid to end the contract, which he would pay when they sent him the final bill in the mail to his new address.

On his way back to Baker’s Street, finally grasping on to a degree of insensibility regarding what he was about to do despite the thrilling thrumming of his heart in his ears, John stopped at a shop to purchase a protector that zipped around the entire mattress. It wasn’t inexpensive by any means, but entirely worth it to not feel as if every place on his body was touching somewhere another man had laid after using the sweetest, most innocent and easiestly fooled boy he had ever known.

Except he wasn’t a boy, and John could not seem to remember that for more than five bloody minutes at a time.

***

“Fuck!” Sherlock exclaimed into relative silence while John scrolled through an email from Harry on his phone, and the doctor nearly fell out of his chair. “Bloody fuck!”

The Sherlock he knew had been too posh to yell out something like that in such an uncontrolled manner, let alone with his children in the flat. John had somehow conveniently- or perhaps  _ not  _ conveniently- managed to come back only after Hamish had gone to sleep and Molly simply wandered around the flat as if looking for something to do until Sherlock gave her permission to play with his lab equipment. Lab equipment that had been replaced because John destroyed it in anger. Well, anger and panic. 

Sherlock was quickly on his feet, shedding the dressing gown he had adorned when caring for Hamish- presumably to preserve the cleanliness of his suit- and fetching his shoes from where they had been kicked off by the bathroom door when he had donned the robe. John could admit, they were fairly contradicting articles of clothing and likely didn’t feel proper being worn together. Not that that explained why Sherlock looked as if he was on the precipice of jumping out of his own skin.

“What’s wrong? Where are you going?” John asked when Sherlock shrugged into his long jacket. 

“Work.” He answered, opening the door and yelling down to Mrs Hudson that the children needed looking after. “It was rather last minute. I’ll be back as early as I can.”

“Back from where? A crime scene?”

Sherlock nodded absently, searching the mantle and bookshelf for his flat keys before finding it in his own pocket. The sound of his phone vibrations offered further distraction from John’s question, as Sherlock skipped pleasantries with whoever was on the other end of the line.

“I’m on my way out the door… no, I’ll be at least an hour, getting a cab that doesn’t smell like rotten takeaway this time of night will be next to impossible… is the car service available this evening or am I on my own to arrange accommodations?” He murmured, clearly not wishing for John to hear him arranging to meet  _ A John  _ and failing miserably. Sherlock snorted, sounding more angry than humorously doubtful. “-figures, always the pessimist… I don’t give two shits why the harlot isn’t coming in. Magdalene better return the favor on her knees. I had to arrange a babysitter on very short notice and it’s not going to come cheap.”

Sherlock’s lie was easy to catch and John wondered only for a moment how much those in his circle knew about his family. What could they have, really? More than anything, the shedding of his posh exterior was what sent John for such a loop. It was a switch flipped when Sherlock slipped from one persona to the other, and John knew instantly which one he preferred.  _ The industry  _ Sherlock was so far from the boy he knew and - as flawed as that boy may have been - that particular change was not for the better.

The man got off the phone, spinning around as if he was somehow forgetting something and patting his pockets, but he seemed to find exactly what he was looking for and the tenseness in his shoulders waned if only slightly.

“I’ve got to man the bar tonight. Randall is sending the car. The lounge keeps one most nights for use by the regulars.” Sherlock explained and thrummed his fingers against his thigh. John knew he was talking about the car, but clearly it applied to prostitutes as well. “It will be here in ten minutes or so. These things do happen in my line of work - scheduling mishaps - but I had intended to take a time off until the tourist season picked back up. Unfortunately, it seems I will not have much of a choice.”

“Bartending?” John asked hopefully and Sherlock gave him a short absent nod of disengaged confirmation. “How late does that typically run?”

Sherlock checked the time on his phone, and John noted on his own that it was only eight in the evening.

“Of a sort. No earlier than one and no later than three. I anticipate a short shift. People don’t necessarily have as much disposable income after falling victim to the social obligations regarding excessive gift giving at holidays and they tend to indulge in less alcohol and it’s glucose rich enhancers in a doomed effort to control their waistlines.”

At that, John couldn’t help but smile.  _ That  _ was the boy he knew.  _ That  _ was Sherlock, at his core. The fact that he wasn’t entirely lost was all that helped John endure the sinking feeling in his gut that he was being brushed off and lied to. That Sherlock was going to come home disheveled, sore between the legs, and smelling like men who had taken their pleasure for a nominal fee. There was no alternative, as far as John was concerned, and he was thinking of that when Sherlock called out his farewell and bounded down the stairs with an announcement that his car had arrived. Maybe he had gotten a text, though that seemed unlikely. A text wouldn’t have kept his eyes glued to the phone for the entirety of his wait.

After checking in with Mrs Hudson, shutting the flat down, brushing his teeth, and stripping down to his pants, John swallowed more than one too many melatonin supplements and crawled between the covers. Even if he had been the type to shower at night, he wouldn’t have done so that particular night. Sleeping next to the love of his life after he fucked other men for money would have had him up in the morning scrubbing his skin raw either way. How Sherlock managed not to do that was a bloody mystery.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After self loathing John, is everyone ready for WORKING Sherlock???


End file.
